When Everything Fractures

Fracture. Rupture. Shatter. Puncture. Breach. Rift. Tear. There’s so many words to describe having the ground break open beneath you, to paint a picture of having everything you have built split in two in a single instant. Those words never quite manage to really describe the pain of that moment, or the agony of the aftermath, though, do they?

Things are not okay with Hubby. Truthfully, from where he sits everything is fine and as it always is because I’ve given up talking to him about the turmoil and questions and doubts swirling around in my brain like a tropical storm. There’s too many threads all tangled together for me to even begin to really sort it all out. I can’t tell what is the past being triggered and what is present day adult me.

Therapy lately has been about that, and nothing else. It’s been about trying to sort out what is past feelings being triggered, what stuff belongs to the parts, what stuff belongs to Adult Alice, and about anger. Anger has been a major theme, starting with trying to figure out if I am angry. I think some parts of me are very angry.

I don’t have a great track record with anger. I don’t like anger, and no one really ever modeled anger for me. The times I remember my mom showing anger were not examples of healthy anger. I remember her giving the silent treatment a lot, and I remember once she threw a glass punch bowl at my Dad (it hit the wall and shattered). Throwing the punch bowl was extremely out of character for her. She didn’t do feelings, even happy wasn’t really acceptable, unless it was a little happy with calm on top. There was no jumping around screaming for joy in my childhood home. There was also no yelling, or crying, or moping about. My relationship with anger was simply to push it down, bury it, pretend it away. The flip side to that, of course, are the moments where I get triggered and scared (usually in regards to not being seen or heard, or feeling like I am being abandoned) and anger pours out of me like fire. Rage, Bea calls it. I hate that word, but she’s not wrong. So, we have been talking a lot about anger, and what does healthy adult anger look like when it is expressed? What does it look and feel like to stay within the window of tolerance and be angry? Spoiler alert, I still don’t have an answer to that.

In our last session we touched on something else. If Hubby can’t -or won’t- own his stuff, then how do we even begin to repair this rupture? Bea’s answer was something about how all I could do at that point was to own my stuff, and control what I could control. She went on to say something about how what I could control was knowing where I stand, what I believe, and being firm in that and not allowing hubby to change it.

“How does that help anything?” I asked her.

“Well, it’s a boundary,” she said.

“But how does that change anything, or make anything better? How does that help? It doesn’t fix anything,” I argued. I didn’t want to just set a boundary of what I believe and move on. That doesn’t feel right to me. Setting a boundary like that doesn’t solve any of the hurt or betrayal that hubby’s words have caused. It doesn’t stop me from feeling like he’s not the person I thought he was. It doesn’t stop any of the triggers that come with that.

“Well….” She said it slowly, like she was thinking, and then she finally told me she wanted to give an answer, but she needed to think it through more.

I suggested she email it to me because at that point we had run over a few minutes so time was up anyway.

Bea emailed me her answer, and as I read it, my heart sank into my stomach. That’s all it took, a few minutes to read an email and the ground caved in, yet again.

What punctured my trust and safety with Bea was this: I guess the “how will that help” boils down to the sad fact that we can ultimately never depend or rely on another person, even our spouse, to make us feel okay. We ultimately have to be okay standing alone. We do expect our spouse to share our values and basic beliefs, so that is hard to compensate for.  I don’t really have answers for any of it—it seems like you have to land in a place with it that lets you find some peace.  It still seems right, though, that the ultimate goal is to be okay within you—that you can’t control anyone other than you and your parts, which can be frustrating and disheartening, but unfortunately real.

Why then, has she spent years telling me it is okay to need people? Bea is the one that taught me I didn’t have to be alone in Miss Perfect’s world or in the dark and twisty place. She showed me I could trust people, and let them in; that people could provide support and help create a sense of safety. She is the one that pushed me to tell hubby about my past, for the sole reason that he could support me, that I deserved to be seen and loved and supported by him. She taught me about healthy boundaries, but also that letting safe people in was a good thing. I was great, I was amazing at being alone, at needing no one. My entire life was structured around keeping others at a distance, at never letting anyone in. Bea changed that, she showed me there was another way to live. So what the hell is this? Because it sounds like, to me, that she is saying Miss Perfect had it right all along. If that’s true, then what was the point of all these years of therapy? If that’s true, then what was the rest of it?

I feel like I am on the edge of a crisis. No one is who I thought they were. First Hubby. Now Bea.

Crack. Fissure. Burst. Separate. Divide. Schism. Split. Rupture. Not one, but two relationships I so carefully built have shattered.

I think I just might punch him

I don’t know if this was ever published or not. I thought it was, but now it’s in my unpublished posts, so I’m going to re-publish it I guess. 🤦🏼‍♀️ I wrote this on October 22.

It’s Wednesday. When Bea logs into therapy, I feel suddenly shy. Bea says a cheerful hello and I look down at my toes and mumble hi.

I think we talk about the weather and Halloween and kids and technology and other random things as I jump from topic to topic. It helps, though, because I start to feel less in the far away and more here. I’m not exactly here, but I am here more than I had been.

Bea seems to know that I am more here and so she says, “I know there is other stuff for us to talk about today, and I think it’s important that we try to work on it for a little while if you feel up to it.”

My hands fly up to hide my face, but I manage to set them in my lap again. “I think….well, I think I know and you know there is bigger stuff but I’m sort of avoiding it or tip toeing around it a little bit.”

“I think that’s okay to do for a little while. In fact, I think it helps you to talk and start to feel a little more settled before we dive in.” Bea is right of course. This has been true since the beginning of my therapy, which is how I originally had 90 minute sessions. I hate that covid and teletherapy have shortened my sessions to an hour. Why did I agree to that at the beginning of all this? Oh, right, because I thought it would be maybe three weeks in total and I hated therapy on a screen. I never imagined it would be months, and probably at least a full year before we would be back in person. I also assumed that once back in person (after a couple weeks, once covid was over) therapy appointment times would go back to normal. But that didn’t happen, and now my time is shortened and I feel a little bit like I agreed to something without really knowing the full ramifications, without questioning what shortening time would mean exactly. But the last time I brought it up, Bea just said that on days when she could give me a longer session time, she would. She never answered my question asking if I could ever have my old time back. Ugh. This is all so frustrating. Today, though, she has more time to give, and so I get to do my talking about nothing thing before diving in.

“It feels a little more like you are here when we talk for a little bit of time,” I whisper.

“Yeah, of course it does. I think you need to time to see what I feel like to you, if I am still me, still how you expect me to be,” Bea agrees.

“Yeah.” I nod my head.

“I was so glad you shared the journal page with me. That really helped things click into place for me.” Bea slowly starts to shift our focus.

My head goes fuzzy again. I cover my face with my hands and this time I don’t move them away.

“This feels so hard, doesn’t it? I know you have been feeling really bad, so bad there aren’t a lot of words. But I am glad you found some words. I’m glad this part we are getting to know could share. She feels really scared and frozen and so sad, and no wonder! This memory of it’s over but not really over, it was terrible.” Bea pushes a little.

I blink back tears. “I’m being so dumb. I know we talked about this already. I shouldn’t need to talk again and again. I’m sorry.”

“No, no sorrys. We did talk about it just a little. But we talked more factual this is what happened, not so much the feelings, the intensity of how bad this really felt. You had hope, you felt free and then all of it was just yanked away. How could this not feel bad?”

“I don’t know. I just…..I can’t get unstuck. I can’t make it stop.” I sigh. I feel broken, damaged.

“I could be wrong, but does this feel like the biggest feelings you’ve really had connected to a memory?”

“I don’t know. It’s the worst I’ve felt in my whole life. I wanted to die.” Tears stream down my face uncontrollably as I finally admit to Bea that I’ve never felt worse. I hide under my blanket. I don’t like to cry in front of anyone.

“Yeah, it was really painful. It was too much, too much for you then, and you had to go away. This part, she had a really yucky job, to hold all these feelings and keep them really far away from the rest of you. She held all this really bad stuff all by herself for a really long time, but she doesn’t have to now.”

“I just really, really want everything to stop.” I cry.

“I know. She really wanted everything to stop then. She did survive, though, and it did stop. It stopped.” Bea says softly.

“It’s not stopped. Nothing can stop him. Nothing can make it better.” I don’t think Bea knows what she is talking about. Nothing feels over or stopped right now.

“It feels like that now, and it might have been true then, but it did stop. She’s safe now.” Bea tells me again.

“You don’t know!” I argue. I feel like Bea isn’t getting it, she doesn’t understand.

“I do know. I know because I am on the outside and I can see the big picture. On the inside, it feels like time stopped, and you are trapped in this really bad place, this hopeless place. But I’m on the outside, and I see how time kept moving. I know the grown up who survived because of the parts. I know the little girl, and all the parts of the teen, and Ms. Perfect and even the one the others don’t like. I know that this new part, she is not alone now, and she is safe now.” Bea speaks firmly, but it’s still caring and gentle and so very much Bea.

“But I am alone.” I whisper-whine.

“She was so alone, and it was really awful. But she doesn’t have to be alone, or scared or frozen anymore. Really bad things did happen, but they are over now. She survived.” Bea tells me again.

“No. It’s never over. It won’t ever be over.” Why can’t I stop crying? At this rate, I’m going to cry myself a lake of feelings to drown in.

“It sure feels like that, doesn’t it? But the truth it that it ended and she is safe now, and she doesn’t have to be alone now. Everything is okay in present day reality. No one can hurt her in the present. And I think if we can help her see that, if we can get this part to rest, then you will start to feel a lot less alone and frozen in your current life.”

“Do you want me to go away?” I ask tearfully. The little bit of grown up Alice that has been working so hard to maintain any bit of control is no longer able to do so.

“No, gosh no!” Bea says quickly, “I don’t want you to go away, not at all. I would like to help you feel not so alone though. I know it feels really bad to feel so alone.”

“You can’t help. No one can help.”

“No one did help you then, but people can help now.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“It really doesn’t feel like anyone can help, does it?”

“No one can stop him. He always gets what he wants. No one can so anything at all.”

“No one stopped him then, but there is a grown up now who is very capable and won’t let anything bad happen again. He won’t ever hurt you again.” Bea informs me.

“Even grown ups can’t stop him.” Does’t she see? No one is able to beat him.

“No grown ups protected you, did they? But you know what? If I were there, I would stop him.” Bea says seriously.

“You can’t! He’s too big and you would get hurt.”

“He feels all powerful, doesn’t he? But he’s not bigger than me.”

“How could you stop him?” This part doesn’t really believe Bea can stop him.

“I could call the police. Maybe I would punch him. I’m very angry for how he hurt you, how he hurt all the parts. Yes, I think I just might punch him.” Bea doesn’t sound scared of him at all.

“Because you are bigger?” I question.

“Yes, and stronger.”

“And the police would really come and stop him?”

“Yes, the police would make him stop forever.” Bea assures this scared, hopeless, frozen part that wants to disappear.

“Forever, forever? Like the real forever?” It’s definitely the hopeless part running things at this point in my session.

“Yes, forever,” she says.

“Can I ask you something?” I whisper it, shyly.

“Of course.” Bea answers this like it’s no big deal.

“If you really were there would you wait for the police to come and stop him or would you leave?”

“I would do neither. I would stop him right away, and then I would call the police. And I wouldn’t leave you alone. I would make sure you were okay.”

“I like that answer.” I’m feeling much less alone at the moment. “What if I wasn’t okay?”

“Then I would sit with you, just like I am doing now.” It’s such a simple response and it’s said like that is a given, because what else would Bea do, besides sit with me and be there?

“What if I cried? Would you be mad or go away?”

“I wouldn’t be mad or go away.”

“And if the police came?” I’m waiting for her to say that then she would leave becase the police would take care of me.

“They would make him stop for good. He wouldn’t be allowed near you again.”

“But he lives next door.” My voice is scared. In my mind, there is never any getting away from him.

“Well, they would talk to the parents, too, yours and his. And the parents would have to keep him away from you.”

“But they would not believe me. I’m a drama queen and I tell stories and I make things up to get attention. That is what she would say.” I’m crying harder now, because I know my mom would not believe me, and that hurts just as much as this despairing feeling.

“I think the police might convince her. And if they didn’t, remember, I would be there, too, and I would tell your mom that you are not being a drama queen, and you are telling the truth.” Bea’s voice is strong, and firm, and I believe her, she would have tried to make my mom listen.

“Maybe she wouldn’t believe you. Maybe he would just be back to babysit me and be very mad with me.” I tell her.

“That’s a big worry, but do you know what? There is a law in our country and it says parents have to protect kids. And if parents know someone is hurting their kid, and the parents don’t keep their kid safe after that, they can get in big, big trouble.”

“What if they broke the law anyways because they really just thought I was lying?”

“Then you would tell me, and I would believe you. I would make sure you were safe,” Bea promises. Then she adds, “And you know who else I would call?”

“Who?”

“Your Grandma and Grandpa. And I bet they would help me keep you safe.” She’s right. If they had known in real life, they would have protected me.

“Maybe I could stay at their house for more than one night.” I feel some hope creep in, and that’s scary because I know how easily hope can be crushed.

“I bet you could!” Bea says, excitedly. “And that would feel so good to be really far away from him.”

“Maybe I could stay with them for a lot of nights.” I suggest.

“That would feel really safe, wouldn’t it?” Bea asks me.

“Yeah. But maybe….is it mean to want to be there and not with my Mom and Dad?” I feel guilty that I want to be with my Grandma and Grandpa and not my parents.

“No, I don’t think so. I think it makes sense, right? You weren’t safe at home, you weren’t protected by your parents. You always felt safe at your grandparents, and they would protect you, and you would be far away from Kenny. I think it would take some time to really trust that your mom and dad would protect you.”

“Maybe….yeah, I think so,” I agree. We sit quiet for a minute. I feel calmer than I have in weeks, and the grown up me is finally able to get somewhat back online. “This is a little ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, I know we can’t go back and you can’t really be there.”

“No, I can’t really be there, but it’s not ridiculous. When parts are so stuck in the past, they don’t know the difference between then and now. And for our brains, imagining a different outcome, just doing that can start to rewire things a little, change how we feel about a situation. If it helps that part to think of me being there and stopping him, then I am all for that. She deserves to feel protected, and she shouldn’t have to suffer alone anymore. She’s held the worst feelings all by herself, but she doesn’t have to anymore.” Bea sounds like Bea, she feels like Bea to me again. I breathe a sigh of relief as she talks.

“I did a….sort of silly thing, I guess. Yesterday, I was trying so hard to find words and I just couldn’t, because even saying that I felt really HUGE sad didn’t seem like enough, so I googled….well, I googled feeling words.” My face is a little red now but I’m still hiding under my blanket, so Bea can’t see my embarrassment.

“That was a good idea. Did you find any words that fit?”

“I made a list….I just, well, if I didn’t know what a word meant I looked it up in the dictionary and then I wrote it on a list if it seemed right. So I made this long list, but it feels sort of…..dramatic.”

“What kind of words did you find?” Bea asks.

“Do you want me to send it to you?” I don’t know if I am hoping she says yes or if I am hoping she says no.

“Yes, I would like that very much.”

I get my phone, and copy the list into email. I send it to her.

Melancholy Despondent Angst Anguish Worthless Despair Trapped Pain Anxiety Feels like heart will burst from sadness Anguish Confused Vulnerable Ashamed Hurt Scared Sorrow Loss of hope Despondent Inconsolable Distraught Paralyzed Disillusioned Betrayed Isolated Desperate Crushed Terrified Shocked Hopeless

It’s not long before Bea’s phone dings with an email, and she reads it. “Are these words in any order, or just written out? Like is the first word the most intense?”

“No, no order, just written down. I’m worried that you will think it’s over the top, drama queen,” I whisper.

“I don’t think that at all. I think this is a really terrible way to feel. Is this feeling like a soup of all these words, all at the same time?”

I nod my head, but then remember she might not be able to see on a screen like she can in person, and I say, “Yes.”

“Well, between this word soup and the journal page and talking to the new part today, I feel like I can really imagine just how awful it was for her. She was so little, and to feel like this, of course she just wanted everything to stop.” I love how Bea points out to me how *normal* my feelings are.

“So you don’t think I’m being a drama queen?” I double check.

“Nope. That isn’t something I have ever thought about you. I think of drama queen more as an action.”

“What…..what do you mean? Like…like crying or saying you are feel really bad?” I stammer out the question, feeling uncertain or confused.

“No, feeling how you feel, sharing that, crying, those feelings are not being a drama queen. That was your mom, it was her stuff that made her feel like that because she couldn’t handle big feelings, maybe any feelings,” Bea reassures me.

“So….then what is being a drama queen? I think I don’t really know…..I think…maybe it’s like I worry, I tell you I am worried you will think that because mom might think it and then she would go away but I think I ask you, I tell you I am worried because I really just don’t know what a drama queen is and I don’t want to be that way and make you leave,” I admit.

“Well, I think it is action….maybe action that is a little bigger than the feelings or situation call for. But also, it isn’t negative, or it doesn’t have to be. Yes, your mom called you a drama queen and it really hurt because it was a way to put her inability to handle feelings on you. That blamed you for having too big of feelings, for feeling anything at all. It made you too much, and it made it your fault that she couldn’t handle it. But I would absolutely call my daughter a drama queen, and it is not a bad thing.” Bea laughs, a soft quiet laugh that is nice. “Did I tell you about the hornet’s nest when she was here this summer?”

“No…”

“Well, my daughter and her boyfriend and my son and his girlfriend went out walking in the woods, and they ran into a hornet’s nest. Now, when this happened, everyone got stung, but my daughter was running through the woods, tearing off her shirt and screaming. Her boyfriend carried her home, and then she spent the day on the couch, with the rest of us bring her ice packs and Tylenol and whatever else she thought would fix it. I’m not saying it didn’t her, but her reaction was just a lot bigger than maybe one would expect. But you know, that’s just her. Or, here, there was one day where both my kids fell and hurt their legs. My son, he just went back to his dorm and rested with ice and pain reliever. My daughter, she called an ambulance, and went to the hospital. Her injury was just a cut, a scrape really that didn’t even need stitches. But my son? When he finally went to the hospital, his leg was broken in two places! That’s just my daughter, though, it’s part of who she is, and it’s not a bad part at all.”

The whole time Bea is talking, my head is spinning. This feels like a new concept, and is very different from how I think of being a drama queen. The crazy thing is Bea doesn’t sound judgmental, or like she thinks this is a very bad thing about her daughter. She sounds like she loves her daughter even with the drama queen stuff. She sounds happy telling this story. And, this idea of a drama queen is not me. I know that. “So, having feelings is not being a drama queen?” It’s part question, part statement.

“Having feelings, even really big feelings is not being a drama queen. Having feelings is part of being human. You just really didn’t get that modeled for you.”

“My grandpa wasn’t afraid of big feelings,” I proclaim.

“I bet he wasn’t.”

“Not even mad scared him. One time, I was real mad, I don’t know why but I was super angry and you know what he did?” The grown up Alice is mostly gone again, with Little girl running things.

“What?” I can hear happy curiosity in Bea’s voice.

“He got the whole entire bucket of his dog Candy’s toys and took them outside and we threw them at the tree as hard as we could and it was okay to be mad.” I smile as I remember this moment. It’s like so many other little moments I had with my Grandparents.

“That was really smart of him,” Bea chuckles.

“It is pretty goofy though, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t think so! It’s what I would have done. In fact, I have a bucket of toys for kids to throw at the wall when they feel that big mad.”

I smile because I like that Bea does this, too. “I don’t know what I was so mad about.”

“That’s not the part that mattered, I don’t think. What mattered was Grandpa being okay with your mad feelings.”

Out of the blue, the intolerable feelings of being alone and hurt and hopeless hit me. “Bea?” I ask, and my voice breaks as I say her name.

“I’m here.” Her voice is reassuring, my calm in this cyclone of feelings.

“Would you really stay with me and stop him forever?” I ask doubtfully.

“Yes, I absolutely would! If I could go back and be there, I would scoop you up and get you far away from him, and not just far away in your head, but the real kind of far away, and he would never hurt you again. I would make sure of that.” She’s so certain, so positive, that I start to feel like I could believe her.

“And you are not leaving?”

“I am not leaving. I will not leave you. when if we aren’t here, together, like right now, I am still here. You aren’t alone.”

I feel like crying. It’s way past time to say goodbye, but I really don’t want to. Saying goodbye feels like all the safety and protection I have been feeling will just evaporate. I can’t hold onto Bea if she isn’t talking to me or writing with me. I don’t want her to disappear.

“Alice, I am here, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You can reach out and double check if you need to. Can you hold onto that?”

“I can try. Just don’t leave forever, okay?”

“I’m not leaving at all. I can hold you and all the parts in my mind, even after we hang up.”

“Okay.” The word comes out a whimper. I feel like Bea ending the session is breaking my heart. Why do I feel like this? What is wrong with me? I hate being this needy, feeling so alone and desperate for Bea to be there. The shame of needing, the vulnerability of it all sends me far away again.

The end of session is fuzzy. My head feels slow, foggy, filled with sand. When things get less fuzzy again, we talk about grown up things, grocery shopping and boring normal everyday stuff like that. I tell Bea the things I forgot to get at the store yesterday, and how I had a panic attack in the middle of the cereal isle and was afraid to move for what felt like a long time, so I had to just pay for what I had and go home. Bea tells me it’s okay, I can go back to the store today if I need to, it is no big deal. We make a plan for the panic. When we say good-bye, I feel sad but not like I’m dying.

Metal Walls and black holes (part one)

It’s been a long time since I have felt this detached. I’m so far away that I can’t even remember last week’s therapy sessions. I only have the vaguest sense that I spent one of those sessions avoiding everything and began a tangent of talking about big things that have changed. It’s not a bad thing to think about, and I did end up making a list of things that have changed. It’s nice to see it all listed out. Some things shift so slowly, I only really notice when I think about what’s different now.

I end up upset after therapy on Monday, hurt that Bea seems to think the triggery, flashbacky, overwhelmed mess that I have been for months has shifted, and things are feeling calmer to me. She says I have seemed to be in a more reflective mood, and that things seem more settled. They don’t feel settled to me. Things are not calm inside. I’m hurt that she doesn’t see this. I spent almost all of Monday’s session feeling trapped, unable to find a way to tell her how bad things feel right now. I open my mouth several times to tell her I feel like I’m dying, like nothing is okay, that I feel so completely hopeless and numb I can’t find words to describe it at all. Instead, I continue talking about things that have changed in the 6 years since I started therapy. Why do I do this? Is there some part of me that stops me from speaking the words I really want to say?

It doesn’t take me very long after our session ends to email Bea and tell her that I am not okay. I calmly write that I don’t feel settled, that my feelings are hurt because she thinks I am okay, because she only saw the surface stuff. I write that I feel so far away, so numb, so alone, and her only seeing the surface feels terrible. It doesn’t take her long to respond. She tells me that she knew there was more, but that she felt as if she couldn’t find a way in. She tells me that she tried fishing around for a way in, but the walls were too thick today. She apologizes, and validates my hurt feelings, saying that she is sure it is really painful and lonely to not be seen. She asks me what I and the parts need from her. I don’t know. I need her to not feel so far away, but I’m the one that is far away, not her.

We meet again on Tuesday, and this time Bea has a way in, sort of. I’ve sent some of my notebook pages to her. (I’ll put those in a separate post https://fallingdowmtherabbithole.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/notebook-pages-metal-walls-and-black-holes/).

I log into teletherapy after I get settled in on the floor with my pillows and blankets. We say hello, and chat about nothing for a minute.

“I was really glad you were able to tell me your feelings were hurt,” Bea says.

I cover my face with my hands, embarrassed.

“It’s okay. I really was glad you were able to find your voice and share that with me. And I am really sorry you felt so hurt.”

“It always hurts when……..people don’t see under the surface.” By people, I mean my attachment relationships– Bea, Kay, and Hubby.

“Yes, it feels too much like reliving your childhood, where no one saw all the hurt underneath that Ms. Perfect was hiding.” Bea says softly.

I nod. “Yeah. It feels lonely.”

“I know. And I want to say that I did know there was more under the surface. I just couldn’t find a way in.”

“Well, I….it feels like…..” my voice trails off, scared to say the words.

“It feels like what?” Bea pushes a little to try to get me to finish my sentence.

I shrug. “There’s my famous filter again.”

“Yeah, that filter is tough! And it’s protected you for a long time. But it’s safe to let the filter go for a little while. Do you think the part that filters things can trust that?”

I shake my head and hide under my blanket. “I don’t want you to think I am being a drama queen,” I whisper.

“Hmmmm…I know that is a real fear, but that’s not me, right? That is something your mom said, that she believed about you, not something I think about you.” The reminder is gentle, and kind. It could sound angry or frustrated, but the way Bea says it, it is reassurance she doesn’t feel that way.

“I know. You always say you don’t think that about me.”

“Alice, in all seriousness, everything you have been through, all the trauma, everything, it was so horrible, I believe that anything you want to do, or think, or say, none of it will ever make you a drama queen.”

I sit in stunned silence for a minute, maybe longer. For probably the millionth time I wonder, was it really that bad? I don’t ask her this though. Instead, I spit out the words I was trying so hard to say earlier. “I feel like…..you know those commercials, I can’t think of which ones, but the ones where everything is grey and awful and sad and then the people find some miracle yogurt or medicine or whatever and everything is colorful and bright and happy? I feel like the before in those commercials.”

“Ahhhh. Things feel really bad right now. I could tell from your notebook pages how terrible things are feeling. That is a good description.”

“I feel really alone. Everything is far away and muted and I’m just numb. Except I don’t know if I get to say that, because there is sad, and maybe other stuff, and its big, really big, maybe too big, and I know it’s there, it’s just too far away to feel. So I don’t know if I get to call that numb.” I’m still hiding. It might feel childish, but it also feels safe, and safe trumps childish.

“I think you can call it whatever you want, but numb is a good explanation. Reading your writing, I was struck by the way the sad was described. I think there is a lot of grief to work through. That’s a big piece of trauma work, to process that grief. Grief is vital to healing, to moving on. I know it hurts, but try to hang on to the fact that getting to a point where you can even be aware of that grief is huge.”

I don’t say anything, because it feels like Bea is leaving. It feels like what she is saying about grief is her declaring we are at the end of things to work through. I shake my head at myself. No, I tell myself, no, no, no. Bea is not telling you that you are almost done with therapy. She is not kicking you out or leaving. She feels far away right now because you are far away. Everyone feels far away right now, even Kat. This is a you problem, not something Bea is doing to you. “Bea?” I say, tentatively.

“Yeah? I’m listening.”

“You feel too far away, and this is too big and I’m all alone. I don’t want to feel like this.”

“I know, I know you don’t. I am here, and I’m not going anywhere. I know this is scary but I’m not afraid of the big feelings, okay?” She speaks soothingly, the way I might speak to Kat when she is so distressed that anything I say isn’t landing with her anyway. “Are there things we can do right now to help you feel a little more connected? Like maybe feel your blanket, it looks fuzzy and soft. Or snuggle Hagrid? Can you listen to my voice and know I’m here with you even if you can’t feel it?”

“You just feel far away. I think it’s me. I’m too far away or too numb, or something. I don’t know. It’s like I built these walls and I was trying to….it’s like the bubble but not…this is….ugh…” I sigh, frustrated that I can not find the words I need to explain how or what I am feeling.

“No, I don’t see Ms. Perfect, not today. In fact I haven’t seen her in a long time.” Bea tells me.

“Well, yeah, because Ms. Perfect is…..I don’t know. She shows up for short things, like….I don’t know….it’s not, well…the bubble is light and bouncy and well, bubbly and stuff and this is….”

“Heavy.” Bea fills in the word for me when my voice drops off, and she’s absolutely right. This is heavy. There is such a huge weight to it, suffocating me.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s so heavy. There’s this black hole of sad and other icky stuff and big feelings, and I just….I can’t look at it, I can’t even acknowledge it really, it’s too much and I just can’t so, I tried….it’s like I tried to build a wall around it but instead I built a wall and locked myself in with the black hole and there’s no windows or doors or anything and I can’t find a way to get out….or to even open a window to let anyone in.”

“I think you must need to be really far away to feel safe. Even if it feels awful, and you aren’t okay, I think the distance you need to be from the world, from yourself– and still feeling not okay– I think that tells us how badly this hurt you, how much it felt like your very existence was being annihilated.” Bea sounds so sad. Is she sad for me?

“I thought….well, you know….I just…it was over. I thought it was over and I wasn’t even sad, or anything but….not happy, I don’t know the right word….”

“Relieved?” Bea suggests.

“Yeah, maybe. I think so. Relieved. But then…I was wrong, it’s not over. And I am not special now, this isn’t because he loves me, I don’t know why now, and it is like everything is broken and none of it will ever be okay or anything else and I can’t, well, I just….” I sigh. This is so hard to explain. “I think that it was like…..before that night, I had this….it wasn’t normal, right? The stuff with him, it wasn’t normal.”

“No, it was not normal,” Bea agrees.

“But it was my normal. A fairytale. Well, maybe a twisted sort of fairytale, but a fairytale in my head. I had a story I would tell myself.”

“Yes, it was a game, he loved you, you were special.” Bea knows the story well.

“Right,” I say. I’m speaking more than usual, but I’m detached, cold, not here and definitely not feeling any of it. The feelings all live in the black hole I am working so hard to avoid. “So, I had this story I told myself, and it was normal, everything was okay. I was okay. But then, that night…..everything changed. It wasn’t over, and I wasn’t special anymore, either. My story didn’t work anymore. I couldn’t make sense of it, there was no understanding, no nice story to tell, and so then….I think I wanted to die.”

“Yeah, I can see that. There were no good choices emotionally that night.”

We are both quiet for what feels like a long while. Maybe Bea talks, or I talk, and I’m just too far away to even remember exactly what was said. Eventually though Bea says something about how I did come back to some sort of feeling that I loved him, or was going to marry him. I really don’t want to talk about this, but the words fall out of my mouth anyway. “I had to fix it.”

“Fix what? Fix it how?” Bea asks. I think I have confused her, but I don’t know for sure. I can’t sense her. Part of it is doing therapy on a screen, but most of it is that I’m too defended to feel her presence. She sounds like Bea, she looks like Bea, but she doesn’t feel like Bea to me.

I don’t answer the question. I’m not sure how to explain the thoughts swirling in my head like a hurricane. The thing is, everything changed that night in the cabin. It was the summer before 5th grade. That’s the year that the eating disorder really started. It was a bad year. And then came the sex talk at church and I realized what exactly was going on, and how sinful and bad I really was, I had to fix it. In my mind, the only way to to fix the whole sex before marriage sin and avoid going to hell was to marry the person. Yeah, I know. It wasn’t sex, the sin was not mine, blah, blah, blah. But it felt like it was mine, and desperate to fix it, I once again had a “crush” on him, and wanted to marry him. Typing this out makes it sound crazier than it feels in my mind. I don’t explain any of this to Bea. It feels too hard, like too many words to say.

When it’s clear I am not going to respond, Bea heads in a different direction. “What happened after? Did vacation go on as planned, were you able to have fun?”

I feel confused, like my head is filled with sand and I can’t think. “I…..I don’t know.” I shake my head, trying to clear it. Things feel….wrong. “I….I really don’t know. I just….ummm…This is crazy. I have no idea.” Panic hits me, hard and out of nowhere. In an instant, I go from numb and far away and feeling like I’m buried alive to terror that I don’t remember what happened after. It’s like not remembering means I didn’t survive.

“Hey, Alice, you are okay. I know, I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you are safe now. You did survive. Not remembering what happened after, that is okay, that just tells us how far away you had to go to protect yourself and survive.” Bea’s voice is reassuring, and calm, and she’s still my safe person.

The panic doesn’t last long., As Bea is talking, I shut down again. I think now it’s because the panic combined with me feeling Bea’s presence and her being safe is too much. It threatens to melt away the heavy metal walls I have constructed, and I need my walls. I hate them, but I need them.

The Non-rupture part 2

I’m still hiding under my blanket, too afraid, or ashamed or some feeling I can’t name, to come out of hiding. So Bea reads, and I hide.

(I’ve tried to label the email as to who is saying what because Bea and I have this habit of writing our responses directly into the email, so it becomes more of a conversation, a back and forth.)

Alice (email 1) So. Every time I try to write, I can’t find the words, or I delete them before I can share them. Stupid editor part. I’ve written this stupid email 3 times today. 

Parts are all stirred up. Ms. Perfect is….well, I don’t know. Unable to run the ship all the time like she used to. I think this….all the triggers and stuff, and school starting and needing to be, I don’t know, not crazy…..maybe the editing part is what is keeping me acting normal and hiding all the ick. Except it’s not helping, not really, not like Ms. Perfect and the bubble. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) It’s interesting that now this Editing Part is a thing.  Is it the same part that cuts off the words when you try to speak?

Alice (response to Bea) Yes, I think it is the same part. Maybe it’s not even a part. It just feels like a part, a part that is erasing or stopping or rewriting or ignoring all the ugly things. It feels like a part that is, I don’t know, maybe like my mother in some ways. But it’s not like Ms. Perfect. Ms. Perfect does things, is always go go go. Even with covid, I could see her scheduling out blocks of time for things like bible study, cleaning, exercise….still always go go go. The editing part, she doesn’t care what I do as long as the ugly is not acknowledged or shared. If I laid in bed all day and watched movies, as long as the ugly stuff was being shoved under the rug, the editing part would be happy. Ms. Perfect would never be okay with that level of laziness, or with that much screen time. 

“It’s almost like the editor has taken Ms. Perfect’s place,” Bea murmurs.

It’s not like that, not really. I shake my head, but of course she can’t see me. “No….not exactly,” I say softly.

“Can you tell me more about this part?” Bea asks.

“I…..the editor is…..I don’t know. It’s not….she just needs things to be buried, ignored, not thought about or said out loud or anything. I don’t know. She doesn’t care about things being perfect and right and good, not like Ms. Perfect.” I try to explain it. It’s not easy.

“So, the editor doesn’t care about what is happening on the outside, as long as all the scary trauma stuff is hidden away even from yourself?” Bea asks, trying again to see if she gets it.

“No….it’s like…” I sit up straight and come out from under my blanket. I look at Bea. “I still hate the enneagram and I do not want to talk about it ever, ever again, but for this one instance, this one time, I think it will help. Ms. Perfect is the one that cares about how things look to others but also really cares about doing things perfect and good and right even if others don’t see that, or know it.”

“Thats a one on the enneagram, the perfectionist.” Bea interjects.

“Yeah, what you insisted I was for like ever and ever. And I’m not.”

“No, I don’t think you are, either.” Bea agrees.

“Okay. And the editor is the one that just kind of goes along and doesn’t like to acknowledge hard stuff or yucky feelings and hides from conflict.” I tell Bea.

“That would be a nine. So the editor is a 9 and Ms. Perfect is a 1,” she says slowly, as if she is thinking. “So, okay, what you are saying is that even though Ms. Perfect and the editor have the same job, Ms. Perfect is more of an external showing, and the editor is more internal. For me, Ms. Perfect feels like a part I know really well, it is is easy to recognize when she is running the ship. The editor, she feels more shadowy to me, I don’t have a handle on who this part is.”

“Yes. You get it. Its not the same, not exactly, but it is the same, sort of.” I smile because of the absurdity of using the enneagram to help sort this out is funny to me.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) It’s probably good that this part is being spoken of as a part—then we can work with it! Not that it wasn’t here before, but it didn’t have a name. Nice to meet you!

Alice (email 1) I write about what the creepy cousin comment means and how confused I am. And then I delete it all.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) I would love to read that if the editor would ever allow it.

Alice (response to Bea) I can’t share it. If I were writing in a paper journal this would be a folded over and taped shut page. Instead it just gets deleted. Ugh. I try to write a journal on my iPad so I can share it and end up just deleting everything. Ugh. 

“Yes, I remember your folded over journal pages taped shut. We had a lot of those in the beginning.” Bea says.

I hide again, and whisper, “But then we did open some eventually.”

“Yes, we did. When you were ready and felt safe enough to do so. And you will be ready and feel safe enough to share this, too, one day. You just have to be patient.”

Ugh. Patience. I am not good at being patient with myself, or the parts. It’s really hard when some parts want so badly to talk and others are just as desperate to never share any of it. Ugh.

Alice (email 1) I write about all this mad inside, and how it all came out at kat and then hubby yelled at me for it and there is so much guilt around this and shame and it just is awful. And then I delete if before I can share it. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) I’m sure that felt bad:(  It makes so much sense why it would come out that way, but of course I know you don’t want to dump it on kat.

Alice (email 1) I write about the bad memory. I write the pieces I remember, even the fuzzy parts and the parts that feel awful and the confusing parts. Then I delete it before no one can know. I can’t tell. Not ever. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) I know this is a very difficult memory. And you don’t have to tell—we can work with what is happening now because of it instead. If some of it does need to be shared, that’s okay too.

Alice (response to Bea) I need you to make the confusing bits not so confusing. Those are the worst. Scary and confusing and it doesn’t really make sense because why would this be what happened, except it’s how I remember it…ugh. I feel like I explained this a few weeks ago. 

Bea starts in on some talk about how memories work, or how trauma memories can be weird or how they form different or something. I don’t know, I just know she’s not getting it.

“No. No. You aren’t listening. You don’t get it! We talked about this already, why don’t you remember? Ugh.” I feel like I’m shouting at her, but I’m in the weird space of here not here, so I could just be whispering or actually shouting.

“Can you tell me what we talked about exactly?” Bea asks.

“Because you forgot,” I say, sadly.

“Because I need a little help to jog my memory. You are important to me, and I want to get this right. I do remember talking about memories and how they can be weird and confusing sometimes, but I don’t remember exactly the explanation of what helped before. Can you share that again?”

Okay. Okay. She didn’t forget because she doesn’t care. I can say it again, I can do this. “Um….you know…it took a long time to talk about what happened before my mom found my underwear…..”

“Yes, that was a very bad memory. So many scary pieces for the little girl. It was really hard to talk about. You needed to know I was a very safe person before you could talk about it.” Bea is reassuring and present and caring.

“Well….I um….do you remember how I said….I told you that it was confusing because I felt…….pain….and I couldn’t move…..so much weight on me……I couldn’t move at all……..it hurt down there but his hands were by my face, both hands and I thought maybe he did something to hurt me before his hands were on my face but all I could remember then was his hands holding my face and pain…it hurts, it hurts so much, I think maybe I am dying or being cut in half, maybe he did something with my scissors except they are on my art desk so that’s not right……” I’m talking too fast and too mixed up and I’m so far away. I hate this memory. I hate that this is part of my life story. This crazy making stuff. I hate how easily I can be back there again.

“Yes, I remember that day, the first time you told me this memory. I remember it very well. That was a hard time for you. You were so hurt. He hurt you so badly, I was so angry that had been done to you, I wanted to kill him,” Bea tells me.

Her admission of anger and of wanting to kill him, pulls me back to present day. “And you called it something. The word I don’t say.”

“Yes, the *R* word,” Bea says.

“Yes….and that was…..it was awful because I didn’t know that was…..that that happened in that memory when I was so young……and also because it was….I don’t know, just bad and it was real after you said that but….also, the really confusing, weird bit of that memory made sense to me, to grown up me, after you called it that. I didn’t…..I couldn’t see, the grown up couldn’t see what…..couldn’t make sense of what the memory really was.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. You didn’t have a grown up version of the memory, just the little girl’s trauma memory and she wouldn’t have known that he raped you in that memory. She wouldn’t have words or context for that. She would only know what she could make sense of. So you are saying that this memory that is coming up now, you need a grown up to help you make sense of it? Because then the confusing bits won’t be so scary, because they will have a context, and maybe make a little bit of sense. Is that right?” Bea’s voice has that excited tone people get when something clicks and they finally understand something they weren’t fully grasping before.

I nod. “Yes. I need you to help me.” I cover my mouth as soon as the words are spoken. Did I really just tell her that I need her? Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?

“I’m here, and I will be here to try to help make sense of this when you are ready to share it, okay?” Bea tells me. Her voice has so much love in it. That’s the only way to describe it. She cares and she is going to be here.

Alice (email 1) I write that I wish I hadn’t said I didn’t want more than an hour for video therapy and that I wish I could ask you to have my old time back because an hour doesn’t feel like enough to talk about those awful things. But I can’t ask for that because the teen and the little girl are so afraid of and so hyper sensitive to rejection (real or imagined). Then I delete that, too, while I beat myself up for needing too much, and for wanting more than I should. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) We can plan in extra time if we want to work on those difficult things. I don’t always have more than an hour, but sometimes I do.

Alice (response to Bea) I hate this. The adult is all like, yep, that sounds good to plan extra time if I need it and it’s an option. The adult knows that early on during covid, the extra time would have been crazy, because she was not really talking about anything. The teen is just mad. She wants her time back like it was. She feels like there was no talking about stuff early on because by the time she had the sense that you were you and really here, time was almost up because through a screen it feels so much harder to feel that you are here and still her safe person. She’s mad you asked about making video therapy an hour and that I agreed without thinking it through or asking about what happens if I need my time back or anything. She just wants things back how they were. And she’s sad that this is just how it is. And she hates everything right now. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) When I come back from up north I think the following Monday I have group. So we could do 7:30 to 9:00 that day as one option, for example.

Alice (response to Bea) The grown up thinks yes, let’s try that. The teen wants to just scream never mind, forget it. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Alice (email 1) On Monday, I wrote that the little girl feels like you don’t want her to talk. You offered a longer time on Wednesday and then in the same breath said it’s not a good time to dig into things, and that just felt like you didn’t really want to hear all the mess that I keep writing about and then deleting. It felt like a big rejection to her. I deleted that, too, because my instinct is still to hide my hurt and pretend it’s fine.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) Oh, I’m so sorry about that! I said we had more time, then remembered as I said it that it was our last time before my vacation, so I was just thinking out loud. I was only thinking about not stirring things up too much when we have to miss three sessions right after. It wasn’t/isn’t about me not wanting to hear about it, but rather it was about keeping you safe.

Alice (response to Bea) I feel like I say this a lot but it doesn’t matter if we talk about it or not, if it’s all there under the surface and messy, it’s there even if we both ignore it. And it’s almost worse if we both ignore it and don’t talk about something so you can “keep me safe.” I feel like all this does is let you feel better about things and not have to worry that we dug up something. Because either way, it’s there for me, whether you talk with me about it or not. Why don’t you get that? It’s all dug up. It’s dug up on an almost nightly basis. 

“You’re right. Trying to keep you as safe as possible does let me feel better about going on vacation and missing 3 sessions in a row. It doesn’t mean that I won’t think about you or worry about you, but yes, trying to keep you safe is about you, but it helps me feel better, too. If I didn’t try to keep you safe, I would be a bad therapist. But of course it’s there for you even if we don’t bring it up. I know that. I do know that. Let me check something…..” Bea’s voice trails off for a second, and then she’s back. “It looks like I will have wifi there, so I can email and could probably even do a short video call check in, if you needed. You know how spotty cell service is there. I know you won’t use my backup therapist while I’m gone, but now I know you can contact me if you need to. I still think trying to keep you safe and going slow, waiting for all the parts to be okay with telling is important. But I do know it is always there for you right now and that it is very hard for you to have this editing part stopping you from speaking.”

“Okay,” I respond. I feel like I should say more, but my thoughts are messy.

Alice (email 1) I write that I really hate that you are leaving. I know you will be back but this is the first time in a long time that you leaving is triggering all these fears and feelings of abandonment. I delete that, too, because there is so much shame around needing anyone. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) It’s okay to need people,

Alice (response to Bea) Ugh. I can’t. I just can’t right now. This does not feel okay. It’s not a good idea. I just can’t. So please stop. It’s not okay, not safe.

“I know it really doesn’t feel okay. I promise it is though. People need people. We are made that way. Can I ask if there is something specific making it feel bad that I’m going on vacation?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” I whisper.

“Okay, we don’t want have to talk about it,” Bea agrees.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) and I used to feel like this when my therapist left, too. This is a vulnerable time for you for a lot of reasons.

Alice (email 1) I just can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend okay, and yet I can’t stop editing everything. I feel stuck and alone and I hate this. I hate that you kept saying how much better I seemed and how much more in the present I was and whatever. I hate that you kept telling me you sense a transition. No. No transition. Just me, doing my best to feel in control and the editing part stopping me from saying all the things that I want so very badly to not be alone with.  I hate that I couldn’t talk last week and that I can’t seem to talk this week and it’s all just hard. 

Bea (response to Alice email 1) Sounds really frustrating, for sure.  Also sounds like I didn’t spend enough time talking to the parts yesterday. Let me clarify: I didn’t say “better,” I said “regulated,” and the positive thing about regulated is that most people can find words better than when they’re out of their window. The Editor may not allow that, of course.

Alice (response to Bea) Well it felt like you just cared that I was acting better…sorry, acting more “regulated”…because that’s much nicer to deal with than crazy stirred up messy Alice.  

“I like dealing with all parts of Alice. I wasn’t pointing it out because I didn’t want to deal with the stirred up parts. I was just hopeful that feeling more regulated would help you find the words when you wanted to talk.” Bea explains. She is so patient. How many times has she had to reassure me over the years that the messy crazy stirred up me does not frighten her or worry her? Way too many to count, and way more often than she should have to.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) The transition I was talking about was the real one—school starting. I don’t just sense it—it happened, and that made left-brain stuff come on line. 

Alice (response to Bea) Yes fine. School started. I acted like a functioning adult. That doesn’t mean any of this is better. It means that I obsessively cleaned and organized to ”an extreme” (not my words, hubby’s words when I was still cleaning— using an old toothbrush to scrub the grout in between the tiles in our entire upstairs—- at 2am one night). It means that in order to manage to function and get Kat to school with a good start to her day, and to pick her up and act like a mom, I have to have this extra organized house and life with every routine and schedule planned to the last detail. Because I need to control something, anything, or I’ll lose my mind. And this is something I’m great at controlling. But I wouldn’t call it a healthy left brain transition thing. I’d call it crazy with a purpose maybe, but not healthy. Yes, sure, I know on the outside it all looks healthy and positive and regulated. But it does not feel that way. I know, without it happening, that if one thing does not go according to my schedule and my very organized plans and routines, I’ll lose it in a not pretty way. This does not feel regulated or better or positive to me. It feels awful. It feels like falling apart from the inside out and no one even sees what’s right in front of them.

“Oh….oh, I see. I didn’t see on Monday, did I? I’m sorry. That must have felt really awful. This doesn’t sound like it feels very healthy or regulated at all. It sounds hard.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. She gets it. “It’s really hard.” I start crying then. I needed her to see, to get it, that I’m not okay, that I’m using every not so great tool I have to hold it together, that I’m trapped alone in my nightmare and I can’t get out, so all I can do is frantically try to regain some kind of control over everything.

“What’s coming up right now?”

“I told you on Monday,” I sob. “I told you I was….that it wasn’t regulated and you just kept telling me how better I was and something about left brain and I just…..”

“Oh, yikes. I really stepped in it, didn’t I? Of course you were mad! I didn’t listen or see you, did I? I’m sorry. I think I was just feeling so hopeful that this would be a time that you could feel a little more in your window, and I am sorry that I was so focused on that, that it caused me to have blinders on.” Bea means it. She messed up and she is willing to accept that responsibility.

“But now you see?” I ask.

“Yes, I see now that things do not feel grounded,” she answers.

“I was so mad. I’m not mad now, though.” I peek out from my blanket. Bea is just Bea, the same as always.

“It would be okay if you were still mad,” Bea teases. It is kind of a joke between us, because I hate mad so much.

“Well, I’m still mad about the editing part. I just….it’s so hard. I hate this.” The tears start again, and I hide my face with my hands for a minute before I give up and hide under my blanket again.

“Can you say more about what this is?” Bea asks.

“The….some parts wanting to talk and then the editor not wanting to talk. It’s just so hard. I can’t keep doing this.” Frustrated, I pick at my fingers until my thumb starts bleeding. Oops.

“Do we know why the editor doesn’t want some parts to be heard?” Bea wonders. She’s doing the curiosity thing, but whatever, I don’t care.

“Because…..it’s not a good idea, bad things would happen then.” It’s not grown up Alice who answers, but I’m not sure if it’s the teen or the little girl or another part.

Bea says something in response, but I don’t remember what. I’ve been dissociating off and on to different degrees all session and things get very fuzzy at this point. I know that somehow, maybe from questions Bea asks, I’m telling Bea that the editor does not want to be seen, and it physically hurts because other parts of me need so badly for her to see them.

“Yeah, that is really hard, isn’t it? Even if I don’t know the words that need to be shared, I do know the little girl and the teen, and I see them.”

“I know…it’s just so hard and I feel so alone.” I know I sound whiny, but I can’t stop myself.

“Do you know why the editor doesn’t want to be seen?” Bea wants to know.

I sigh. “It’s so hard not to edit answers about the editor!”

“Hmmm, yes, I imagine that would be very true. I’m sure the editor doesn’t want me knowing too much about her.”

“Ugh,” I mumble. And then, interrupting Bea, and speaking very quickly, I say, “Real answer, no editing, first thought after you asked that is because it’s dangerous.”

“Being seen is dangerous, yeah. It feels very dangerous. If I see you, I could reject you. If I see you, I can hurt you. Yes, being seen is scary because it can feel so dangerous.” Bea sympathizes.

I don’t say anything, but I am feeling very uncomfortable and way too vulnerable.

Bea (response to Alice email 1) I keep dozing off and starting to dream, so I need to go to bed, and I hope there’s nothing weird that doesn’t make sense. See you in the morning!

Alice (response to Bea) And now that the mad has been let out…….Are you mad with me now? please just don’t leave me okay? Please tell me you are coming back and you will still be you and it will be okay. 

“No, I’m not mad at the little girl or the teen or any parts of Alice. I’m not mad at all. And I will be back, and I will be me, just me. It will be okay.”

Shame heats my face. I hate that I need this reassurance.

“Alice? Are you still here?” Bea asks.

“Yeah….just….embarrassed. I’m sorry.” I whisper.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Bea declares. “Can I tell you something?”

“Okay,” I say.

“I was worried earlier that I would mess this up and you would leave. You worry about me getting mad and leaving you, but I worry about the same thing sometimes.” She stage whispers this, like it is a secret.

It takes a minute for her words to sink in. “You would be sad if I left?” The little girl needs to check that she is understanding this right.

“Yes, I would be sad. This is a relationship. It’s real, even if it is a therapy relationship. I would be very sad if you left.” She affirms.

I am finding this to be unbelievable. “You really would be sad?” I question again.

“Yes! You matter to me. You matter to lots of people. You are important, and you have value just for being you. Yes, I would be sad.” Bea assures me.

“Oh,” is all I can say. I’m surprised, but Bea sounds authentic. She means it. I matter to her. All of a sudden, things feel a little more equal. This is no longer a relationship where I am needy and pathetic and attached to Bea and she could take me or leave me. It’s no longer a relationship where she is one of the most important people in my life and I am nothing to her. (I know Bea has never actually felt like I am nothing to her, but when those attachment and abandonment feelings kick in before she leaves for a trip, it feels like I am just an interchangeable client.)

The rest of the day, I keep returning to this idea that I matter to Bea, that she would miss me and be sad if I just suddenly left therapy. Just like that, the rupture I was so scared we were careening towards, has been avoided. We’re okay.

The Non-rupture part 1

Tuesday, I email Bea. She writes back, and it’s only then that I realize a part of me is so angry at her for not seeing how bad I really feel. I respond to her email, but it’s so snarky and mean, I can’t send it. I want to send it, I want her to know I’m upset with her. On one hand, I don’t want to her to leave for vacation while I’m so angry, but on the other, I am so afraid that we are headed for a rupture and I really don’t want to have this huge blow out rupture right before she leaves. Maybe it would be easier to just pretend everything is okay.

Wednesday morning, after I’m all settled on the floor with my blanket and pillows and Stitch, I read my response to her email one more time. And then, without even thinking about it, I hit send. Crap. Why did I just do that? I didn’t really want to send it, did I? Ugh.

When I log on for therapy, I don’t even want to talk to Bea. I’m behaving like a snarky teen, showing up to therapy because I am being forced to go. In my mind all I can think is that Bea can’t force me to talk.

When Bea logs on and says hello, I want to throw my iPad across the room. The teen is so angry at her.

Bea talks about her dog, asks about how school is going for Kat, and says hello to Hagrid. I know she is trying to get me engaged, to look at her, to respond. Instead, I stare at the floor, refusing to look at her. I sit with my knees pulled into my chest and my arms wrapped around them. My responses are monosyllabic, and my voice is hollow, with the words clipped and short.

Finally, Bea says, “I’m feeling a little bit anxious and I think I better take a minute and check in with that feeling, see if I can reassure it. Otherwise I am afraid that I won’t be fully present with you.” She does stuff like this, sometimes. It’s good modeling for me. It is actually really helpful to see Bea’s process of checking in with herself. I do this sometimes with Kat, this pause to check in with yourself so your stuff doesn’t get in the way of what the other person needs. It’s a good skill to have, I think. But today, I am annoyed. I don’t care how Bea is feeling. I want her to shut up and leave me alone. I also desperately want her to see me and to get it.

Bea talks through her process out loud, and soothes her anxious feeling. “This anxious feeling is really worried I am going to mess this up, and it feels so important to me that today be a good session so that when I leave for vacation you can still feel connection and safety.”

I shrug. I don’t care.

“Okay,” Bea takes a deep breath and continues, “That feels better. I was glad to get an email from you, and I hope my response made sense. I kept dozing off, and then trying to finish writing, so I hope there wasn’t anything weird there.”

“There wasn’t.” My voice is cold, and I still can’t look at her.

We sit in silence, and just when I think this is going no where and I should just hang up, I tell Bea I sent a response to her email. “But don’t open it. You shouldn’t read it. I just…I don’t know.”

“Okay. I won’t open it yet. Can we talk about it?” She asks me.

“I…I was mad.”

“Yeah. That’s okay. You can be mad. Mad is just a feeling.” She sounds so sure, so certain that mad is okay.

I shake my head. “I was mad at you. I don’t want things to, well….I don’t want that to make a mess of everything again. I don’t want to fight.”

“Ahhh. You’re worried that you being mad will make me defensive and we will have a bad rupture. I’m not feeling defensive, only curious about what made you mad, and hopeful that I can help sort out the mad and repair anything I did or said to make you feel like this.”

Her words sink in, slowly. She sounds real, and not upset in the least. I still can’t trust it, though. “Maybe you should just delete it,” I suggest.

“I could do that. But I wonder if the teen would be upset then? If she would feel unheard, and alone because I deleted her words? I wonder if I read them now and responded to them if that would help her to feel less hurt and angry?” Bea is gentle when she says this, but there is a tone in her voice….not a bad tone, maybe more like a serious tone….like a mom tone that says *I care and I think this is important so please pay attention*.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to ruin everything and I was so mad at you.” I pick at a corner of my blanket as I speak, still refusing to look at her.

“I don’t think your mad feelings are going to ruin things between us.” Bea pauses, and then says slowly, “I had a new client recently, we had only had a few sessions, and she got angry with me. A big rupture happened, and she ended up quitting. When that happened, I thought of you, and all the ruptures we have had and worked through to repair, and I realized how very important it is to have a strong relationship as a foundation for when these things happen. I mean, of course I know the relationship is the most important thing in therapy, but this contrast just really stood out to me. I’m telling you this because I want you to know, to really see that our relationship is strong enough to withstand the mad. I can handle the mad, and so can this relationship.”

I shake my head. I’m so confused. I don’t know what I want. I feel like I have all these conflicting feelings and thoughts going on inside. “Just delete it,” I whisper the words, and they come out mumbled and muted.

Bea hears *just read it* and so she begins reading. I don’t realize this right away because I’m still looking down, refusing to look at Bea.

Bea reads…..

okay…I wrote this, the purple, last night…I’m just going to send it now…even though I sort of just want to smile and pretend everything is fine. But I’ve learned enough to know that does not work, so…..here goes. I’m feeling really vulnerable this morning. 

I’m not sure about sending this. Some part of me feels like it would be better to just pretend everything is all okay. Even if I send this, there’s no guarantee that the editing part won’t stop my words in the morning anyway. But, I thought if I send this you can read it and we can talk about it in the morning. I just don’t know if it’s a good idea. 

The teen is mad and being snarky and mean. I feel that…….the be so angry and make you go away so it won’t matter if you hurt my feelings thing happening. But then after the mad and the snarky and the mean is still the fear of being left. But there’s a lot of mad here, right now. I hate being mad at you. Why does this mad seem to happen every time the really bad memories pop up? 

I don’t realize Bea is reading my email until she says, “I knew the teen was here this morning.” She says it in this happy voice, like she is glad to have this mean, snarky, sulky teen around. “I know there is a lot of hurt and fear under that mad, and I’m not scared of any of your feelings. I really believe we can talk about it, and that there will be no ruptures today. I know how much you want to pretend it’s okay, but I am really glad you didn’t.”

My head snaps up, and I look at Bea. Then, I throw my blanket over my head and say angrily, “I said to delete it, not read it!”

Bea immediately apologizes. “I’m stopping reading right now. I’m so sorry. I thought you said to *just read it*. I am very sorry I misheard. I can delete it right now if that’s what you really want. But I sure would like to know what you were thinking and feeling.”

I sigh. I could get really mad right now. She didn’t listen, she betrayed my trust, she read the thing I told her to delete. I could get mad, be full of righteous indignation. But do I really want to do that? Do I want to get angry and push her away over something that was an honest mistake? And really, now that she has started reading, do I want her to stop or do I want her to read it all and understand how mad I am? I don’t know. I can’t decide. Both options seem reasonable to me, and they each seem like an equally good choice. Today, at this moment, I can see that acting furious and causing a rupture over Bea *betraying my trust and not listening* was clearly all about protecting myself from further hurts.

I go back and forth, unsure what to do. “Just read it,” I finally snap at Bea.

“Are you sure? I won’t be angry if you tell me to delete it.” I think she is trying to be reassuring and to make sure I am making choices based on what I want and not what I think the other person wants me to do.

“Yes, just read it.” I’m exasperated and it shows in my voice.

“Okay, then,” Bea says, and she starts to read.

Connection in the midst of living a nightmare

I’m home alone, and it’s time for therapy. I get situated and log on.

“Hey there,” Bea says as she logs on.

“Hi,” I say. My voice is quiet and uncertain.

“Hey! I can hear you today. Yay!” Bea does a little cheer.

I feel relieved, but I don’t say anything.

“How are things today?” She asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Bea waits, and I finally whisper, “Yesterday was a bad night and a bad morning and I really wanted to tell you.”

“Do you still want to tell me? I’m ready to listen to whatever you want to talk about.”

“Yes, okay. I want to talk to you.” Why does it feel embarrassing to admit that Bea is the one I want to talk to? She’s my therapist, and more than that, she is one of my attachment relationships. It’s normal for me to want to talk to her, it shouldn’t feel embarrassing or like I’m broken for wanting to talk to her.

“Do you want to talk about why it was a bad night and a bad morning?” Bea’s voice is careful, cautious. I think maybe she doesn’t want to make me feel pushed into talking.

“I had a scary dream,” I tell her.

“Yeah, that can set us up for a rough day, can’t it?”

I nod. “It was the dream….it was bad. Scary. It’s funny, because I don’t think I was scared when things happened. I don’t remember scared back then. Scared happens now, when I dream or when I remember when I’m awake. That’s strange, right? Crazy?” I’m a bit scattered and messy today.

“No, it’s not strange. I think you couldn’t feel the scared back then, it was too big and too much, and your family didn’t really believe in emotions, so you had to seperate it away. But now, it’s safe to really feel the scared feelings. I think you are feeling the feelings you would have felt then. Does that make sense? I hope it does. You aren’t crazy.”

“I guess. So I had the scary dream and then, I was awake, and I really like to go upstairs and turn on all the lights and look in the mirror and see that I am grown up and I just couldn’t. I was too stuck, so I was in bed and just there and hubby got up early for this meeting and then….it was not good. Not a good morning.” I pull my blanket over my head, not even thinking about it. It seems a little silly to hide like this over a screen, but I feel safer, and I don’t have to go so far away, which is good.

“That dream must have made it really hard to be in the present. Maybe you were still stuck in the past, feeling scared and hurt?” Bea says softly.

“Yes. I was. I was scared. Hubby scared me. He leaned over me to say goodbye and I hid under my blanket and yelled at him to go away.” I start to cry softly. I feel so much shame for how I acted.

“I can see how that would happen. It was probably very scary.”

“It was bad.” I hide my face, even though I am under the blanket.

“Things have been so real and alive for you right now, it is probably very hard to seperate things out.” Bea tells me.

“We don’t talk about this dream.” I feel really far away when I tell Bea this.

“Why not?”

“Because it is….we can’t talk about it. I can’t say it. So we don’t talk about it.”

“Is it something new, or just something we haven’t talked about?” Bea asks.

“Not new,” I whisper.

“But not something we talk about?”

“No…we don’t talk about this. And it’s so…ugh. I can’t, because….I see these things in my head and it’s so real and awful but then, it’s…I mean, it’s crazy because there’s no way that is what happened. It doesn’t make sense, you know?” I’m rambling but I can’t stop it.

Bea is confused, I can hear it in her voice. “Your dreams are usually more of a trauma dream, a flashback, so they are very real. Sometimes having dreams that are the regular kind, with all the crazy stuff that happens in them can feel really weird.”

“No, no, no. It’s not like that!” I’m so frusterated she isn’t getting it.

“Okay, I hear that. Can you tell me what is crazy in the nightmare?”

“No. I….it’s…..do you remember when I was talking about what happened with him before I hid my underwear under my bed and got in trouble?” I ask.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Not like we just mentioned it but I was telling you what happened, the first time I told you all of it? A long time ago?” It wasn’t a long time ago, not really. It was maybe two or three years ago. But that feels like a long time ago right now.

“I do remember. It was one of the hardest memories for you to talk about.” Bea reassures me.

“Yeah….and I was talking about what happened but it was really….the little girl’s story….it was her…..you know, how she saw things?” I’m talking slow, and I feel hollow and numb.

“Yes, it was a child’s veiwpoint, it was all from the little girl’s perspective,” Bea agrees. She does remember and she is getting this, at least.

“So then….you said….you called it….that word. You know.”

“Yes, I called it a word you don’t like.” Her voice is soft and reassuring. She’s not judging me.

“Say it,” I direct her.

“Rape. He raped you.” Bea says slowly. Her voice is this careful neutral tone.

“Yes. But I couldn’t…..it didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t make sense to me that my memory was that word. It just….it didn’t seem like that was right. It felt crazy.”

“Yes, I remember. It was really hard to sort of blend the child’s perspective with the adult’s understanding of what happened. There were some things that the child believed to help make sense of it all at the time, and you had to really rearrange your thinking around all of it. That was a lot of hard work on your part to be able to do that. But you did it.”

“I think…..I think this might be like that. But it’s not making sense and I just can’t…..and it’s so….I’m so….I can’t…I don’t know.” I hope she understands. I desperately need her to understand.

“That makes sense. I get that. We can work on helping it make sense and be less confusing.”

“But I can’t talk about it.” The shame is that great. Once, years ago, Bea asked a question about this, kind of a *did this ever happen* question, and I answered yes, but refused to really discuss it, or acknowledge it.

“Have we ever talked about it?” She asks. “You don’t have to tell me, and you don’t have to talk about it.”

“I….yes. But not….we don’t talk about it.” I’m not sure if the we is me and Bea or if the we is grown up Alice and the parts. It just doesn’t seem correct to say that I don’t talk about it.

“Okay. I have maybe an idea of what it is.” Bea says this slowly and carefully, and I still hear no judgement or worry in her voice.

“What?” I ask.

“Well….I don’t know if I want to say it, because I don’t want to make you feel upset or scared or worried. I don’t want you to feel like you have to talk about this. I want you to be able to talk about this when you choose, at your own pace.”

I think for a minute. “No, it’s okay. I just need to know what you think it is, even if I can’t say any words right now.”

“The (blank blank blank thing because I’m not ready to share it, even here.)” Bea speaks clearly and again with no judgement.

“Yes, that. And something else. But that.” I start to sob as I say the words.

We spend the rest of my session with me crying, and Bea reassuring me she is here and not leaving. She says I don’t have to talk until I am ready, and that it’s okay. I calm down enough to say goodbye, but I stay hidden under my blanket.

I might be living a nightmare over and over in my head, but it’s not the same as when I was a little girl. I’m not alone. Bea is here, and she isn’t leaving me. I’m not alone.

What enactment means to me and Bea

I read the 2 pages that covered enactments in the SP book, and I freaked out. I spent an hour googling and reading about enactment. I managed to calm myself down by reminding myself that I was the one who had seen the parallel between my mom’s behavior and Bea’s behavior during the spring rupture. I reminded myself that I brought it up, and that even though we had talked a bit about it, Bea had stayed present and connected, not shrinky. Then, I freaked out again about the whole maternal transference thing, googled that. Eventually, I realized what I wanted was to find some story about someone who felt like me. I wanted to read about transference and enactments from the client point of view. All the articles and medical papers, therapy books, those weren’t helping me. So, I came here and I asked you all. And I got great comments. I finally felt like I was okay, not crazy, and not alone. So much of my struggle with this stuff isn’t the….well, I guess the enactment in and of itself. Its the labeling, the clinical feel, the fear that labeling makes none of this real, the shame that comes with that. And you guys get it in a way no one else does. (Somebody really needs to write an educational book about this stuff from the client view point.)

I read your comments and I did a lot of thinking, and writing. It wasn’t easy, because the teen was hurting and pissed off about the whole thing, and wanting to avoid all the awful feelings coming up while at the same time wanting to make sense of it all and understand the feelings, the why of it and the reason all these defensive feelings come up.

I finally decided that I understood enactment to be this: Enactment happened because something in some part of me (or (and) Bea) got triggered by similarities between the past and the present in the relationship. Basically, I got so upset and rage-full because what hurt me in the present (spring 2018) was a similar hurt from the past (my mom).

I emailed Bea, just trying to make sense of it all, and we wrote back and forth a bit. I asked her why, even if I can understand what enactment is, can see it, then why does it hurt and upset me so much? Why am I so afraid of you calling something an enactment or transference or whatever other shrinky thing? Why is it so triggering to discuss this that I have to go far away to even think of talking about it? She offered up some ideas, and nothing really hit home.

Restless, I tried distracting myself. When that didn’t work, I got out pen and paper and wrote. I decided to just allow the teen to write whatever she was feeling or thinking. I didn’t censor anything, and I didn’t let Ms. Perfect censor the teen, either. And so much came out. It wasn’t a lot of writing, but it was so much. I knew I had to give it to Bea. I emailed Bea and told her the teen had important writing to give her, and asked her to please not let me avoid it, because I was scared but it needed to be talked about, and I would be upset if we didn’t talk about it.

Wednesday, when I get to Bea’s office, I feel sick. Bea doesn’t waste anytime, either. Once I sit down and get settled she says, “I’m really curious to read what the teen wrote. Would she still like to share it?”

Instantly, I’m gone. I’m so far away, I don’t answer, I don’t hide my face, I don’t do anything but freeze.

Eventually, I realize Bea is speaking. “Alice. Alice you are too far away. That really triggered something, didn’t it? The teen needs to know she doesn’t have to share anything she’s not ready for. We can wait. I’m not in any kind of hurry. We can wait until after the holidays. Okay?”

That’s enough to pull me back a little bit. “No. No, this can’t wait. If I wait, it will….It just can’t wait. It’s just hard. Because….I don’t want you to think I’m being awful again.”

“How about this? How about if I read it knowing that you were unfiltered and raw, and just writing how you feel?”

“Okay. Okay, because I’m not blaming you or being upset with you or anything like that. Okay? I don’t want you to…..just please, please don’t leave.” I whisper.

“I’m not leaving. I’m right here, and whatever you wrote isn’t going to send me away.” Bea sounds certain, and strong and so very here.

I hand her a folded sheet of notebook paper. The teen didn’t write in my notebook in case she didn’t want Bea to see it. As Bea takes it from me she asks, “Do you want your blanket?” I nod my head yes, and she gets it for me.

I cover my legs with the fleece blanket. I have cloud pillow on my lap, hugged to me. My hands are clenched, holding on to pieces of the blanket.

“Are you here enough?” Bea asks.

I’m not sure. I probably should tell her no, but instead I say, “Maybe.”

Bea smiles at that and shakes her head a little. It’s a gesture adult Alice makes often with Kat; that sort of knowing who Kat is and maybe being a bit exasperated by it but also just, well, loving who she is and being so glad that she is able to be authentic. It feels real, that smile and head shake and I sit in that feeling, that Bea is here and she is herself.

Bea doublechecks it’s okay to read, and when I give the go ahead, she opens the sheet of paper.

Enactment means the relationship is not real. It means that the hurt in the present is not real. It means that you didn’t do anything to hurt my feelings and I’m just crazy. It means that I screwed up. It means that I can’t trust my feelings. It means that I am bad, that I didn’t behave appropriately and it means that I really am a drama queen who overreacts and is over sensitive about everything. It means that all my feelings, worries, hurts, thoughts, all of it can be dismissed or ignored because it’s not real anyway. It means it’s all my fault and it means that you don’t have to deal with me because it’s my issue and so I’ll be stuck dealing with it all alone. It means that I’m exposed and vulnerable and all the hurt in the past is all dug up and there’s no one to help me with it and I can’t do it. It means that you don’t care, that I’m just something to be dealt with because none of it has anything to do with you anyway. It means I’m dumb for not realizing what was going on and you just get to presume to know and see everything because you did see what was going on! It means I somehow screwed up AGAIN and overreacted AGAIN. It means that you WILL leave me. Because why would you want to deal with a mean drama queen teen who is blaming you for things you never did? Why would you stay and try to help someone who won’t trust you because of something you didn’t even do?

It feels like a very, very long time before she’s done reading. It’s excruciating sitting there, feeling so vulnerable and exposed.

“This sounds so painful. It sounds horrible, and it’s no wonder enactment and all the shrinky things are so triggering. If this is what they feel like, of course it’s going to be awful for you to have me talk about this stuff.” Bea’s words offer me some sense of safety. She’s here, she’s not ignoring me, or yelling at me for overreacting. She’s not mad and she’s not gone.

I want to tell her I’m so thankful she sees it, that she is able to see why this is such a terrible topic. I don’t, though. Instead, I bury my face in cloud pillow.

“Does it feel to you like if we talk about enactment, that I am hiding behind this therapist wall? I get the sense that the shrinky stuff really feels like a wall between us to you. Maybe even like we are separated in different rooms and only I have a viewing window to observe you.”

“It is a wall.” I didn’t think I was whispering, but my voice is so quiet, so tiny. I don’t think I can speak any louder, though.

“Yeah, it really feels like a wall to you. I wonder if I can explain how I experience it?”

“That would be okay, I think.” I’m hesitant because I don’t want her to get shrinky.

“It’s not shrinky, okay? Just me,” she reassures me, almost like she read my mind. “I see it as….you and I are surrounded by the walls of enactment. We are in the center, we are in it together. I have to be able to see the when the walls are up and around us, but I’m right there with you.”

“Not separate?”

“No, not at all. It’s like this….did you ever spin in circles when you were s kid?”

“Yeah.” I nod my head.

“So while you are spinning in circles, it is very hard to watch where you are going, right? It’s my job to watch where you are going. I’m right there, standing right next to you in the middle of the room while you spin, but I can’t start spinning, too, otherwise you could bump your head, or I could even crash into you. And I don’t want either of those things to happen to you. That’s why I wouldn’t want to put a wall between us, because then I can’t block you from bumping your head. But I also can’t spin with you because then I could hurt you. Does that make sense?”

I think about what she just said. It actually does make sense. It’s weird, but it makes sense to me. “It does.” I think some more, and then I ask, “So you don’t want to get away from me?”

“No. Not at all. I know sometimes it really feels like I don’t care, but I do care. I care very, very much. You matter to me, and it matters to me that you are safe.” She sounds….serious. “I’m real, and our relationship is real. The feelings are real. I want to make sure you know that.”

“I really need you to be real.” I pull the blanket to my face as I say the words, and then I slowly peek out at her.

“I know you do. And I am,” she says softly.

We sit in silence for a moment, and then she says, “You aren’t dumb. None of us are aware of it when we are reacting to our past, until…well, until we are aware of it. I don’t know more about you than you know. I really don’t presume to know everything, not by a long shot. But I have to be able to see when the walls are up around us. It’s the same as when you can see that hubby is getting defensive or upset over something that doesn’t really have to do with you. He can’t see it, but you can. And I bet now that you have seen this mom transference and enactment so clearly, I bet that you will notice the next time you are reacting to someone as if you expect them to treat you like your mom did.”

“I still don’t like the shrinky words.” I know, I know, it’s semantics, but it just brings up so much negative feeling.

“Well, what if we said the situation was paralleling one from the past? Or we could say that the past was triggered. We could even just say that the walls are up.” Bea doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that once again, I am asking her to find different words.

“Those are all okay. A lot better, actually,” I tell her.

We laugh about how we have created this language that is all our own. Bea tells me a funny story about how she called something too shrinky in her SP consultation group. “Another therapist in the group was having trouble understanding why one of her clients would get so upset when she would sort of step back and get more logical, rational. I immediately thought, ‘it’s because you are being too shrinky’. Of course, then I had to explain about shrinky. I find myself using you as an example to help other therapists in my group understand why their people don’t like something the therapist is doing.”

“Really?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, really. You have taught me a lot. This goes both ways, you know.”

I nod my head. “I guess so.” I don’t really think……I guess I don’t think about me mattering enough to have any impact on Bea. I like the fact that maybe I have helped her see some things she maybe wouldn’t have seen, and that she can use that to help other therapists not be shrinky.

“I know we talked before, a long time ago about all the shrinky stuff like transference, but this time it feels better.” I feel shy, telling her this, but I want her to know.

“I’m really glad. It feels better to me, too.”

“Bea?”

“Yeah?”

“I was looking through emails last night trying to find the ones where we talked about transference. I couldn’t find them but I….I saw how…..well, the little girl emailed you a lot. Like every other day was the most time between emails…..just to ask if you were there, to make sure you weren’t leaving…..I just….” I trail off, uncertain what it is I want to say.

“Did that surprise you?”

“Well….yeah. I mean, I know she emailed you more than me (the teen) and I know the little girl is more…..she’s better at reaching……but I didn’t know she wrote that much. And you answered. Every time you answered that you were still there.”

“I did, yes. I hope you know you can email, too. It’s okay if you need to.” I swear, I can hear all the care in her voice. I do matter to her.

“I just…..I feel like I should apologize for that. I mean, it was like the first two years, everyday, emailing to see if you were still there. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no sorry. I wasn’t bothered by it, and you― the little girl― needed that reassurance to feel safe. I knew when I made the offer of emailing when you needed to that that could mean multiple emails between appointments. I was okay with that.”

I think about it. Bea might respond a little differently to the little girl than to the teen, but she’s still always Bea. The difference is that for the little girl, a short *I’m here* email was enough, even if she had written a lot. The teen finds danger in not having her words directly responded to. The little girl just wanted the reassurance that Bea had not left her or forgotten about her. The teen needs to know that she isn’t being ignored or dismissed and she frequently approaches situations with the assumption that she is being ignored, that the other person isn’t really there and the other person needs to prove they are there and that they do see her and can handle her.

“I’m glad you were…..that it was okay with you.” I hide my face again, embarrassed.

“It’s always okay with me,” she says. “Speaking of, we are going to have to stop in a few minutes, but I want to make sure all the parts have what they need, that they are okay.”

“They are. I feel okay. I’m glad we talked about shrinky things. I was afraid it could go really wrong and that would be awful right before a break, but it didn’t go bad and I feel better. I think I get it now.”

“Okay. If the any of the parts do need to reach out, they can. I plan on doing a lot of lounging and eating cookies. I can lounge and eat cookies and respond to emails.” She sounds so cheerful.

“Okay,” I tell her.

We spend a few more minutes talking about Christmas, and I share some Grandma and Grandpa stories. It feels good to talk about them, and grounding to end the last therapy session of the year like this.

We say Merry Christmas and I head out the door. Even with a two week break, I feel okay. I know Bea is still there, even if I’m not seeing her twice a week, and she will be there when the break is over. I trust that she won’t forget about me, and I can see her lounging with a good book, a mocha and cookies. And I believe her that she will be there if I need her. I’m okay.

All the shrinky things

All the shrinky things keeps popping up in my life. In my last post, I asked some questions about enactment, transference, how you all felt about those concepts, those words, how you deal with it, how you experience it. And I am so grateful for all the responses I received. They helped immensely when I sat down to write in my notebook, and when I talked with Bea.

I want so badly to tell you all about Wednesday’s session, but first I think that I need to back up…..

Therapy has been all about the teen lately. A lot of it has been trying to build a relationship, trust, between Bea and the teen. The teen is so suspicious of everything. A few weeks ago, as the teen and Bea talked, Bea asked if there was any part of the teen that maybe wanted to be seen, to have connection? I couldn’t answer that when she asked it. Later, though, I sorted some thoughts out, and the next session, we talked about it.

“I know we said there were two teen parts, but that’s not right,” I tell Bea cautiously. I’m always afraid that she is going to tell I’m wrong.

“Can you say more about that? About what does feel right?” She has that bright curious tone in her voice. She really does want to know.

“Well….I just….what if you think I’m wrong?” I hide behind a pillow as I ask her this.

“Well, I don’t really think anything, except that you are the only one who knows how your parts are organized. I may have guesses, but even then, I don’t have an idea of *this is how Alice’s parts are*. But I would like to know, to understand,” she says, kindly.

“Okay. Okay. Well….I think……no, I know, there is one teen part. It’s all one part. Its just like….there are, maybe pieces of her….not really enough to be a part, but also they are separate in some ways. I don’t know.” I mumble my way through this, feeling dumb.

“That makes sense. Really good sense, actually.”

“It does?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, it does. Can you tell me about the pieces?”

I nod, still hiding behind the pillow. I have my blanket covering my legs, so I can hide under it if I need to. “There’s the vulnerable piece. That’s the piece that is afraid of you leaving. There’s the shame piece, and that’s the piece that just feels….well, shameful for even existing, and shameful for needing anything, or for being, well, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. And the angry piece. The angry piece of the teen was the one running things this spring. But they are all the teen, all one.”

“That makes a lot of sense to me,” Bea tells me.

“I do want……the teen does want….connection. I just…..before, we tried and it was just this…..it all blew up. I screwed up. I can’t….I won’t be able to….” I cannot finish my sentence. Shame washes over me, and I have no words left.

“You won’t be able to what?” Bea prompts.

“I can’t answer that right now. I just don’t want to get mad again. I don’t want to be mad and have you leave.” I yank the turquoise blanket over my head.

“I’m not worried about that,” Bea assures me.

“Why?”

“Well, because I know that mad wasn’t about me. Anytime there’s an overreaction like that, it means that one of our issues has been triggered.” Her answer is simple, and her voice is straightforward. There’s no blame, no anger, no distancing in her tone, but I shut down anyway.

Devastated. I feel devastated. I thought we had agreed it was about both of us, that it was both of us who messed up, and that it wasn’t just all about me and my past. What happened? Did she just agree with me so we could repair the rupture before her trip? Did she trick me into believing her? I can’t believe she is saying I overreacted. I can’t do this.

I stayed far away and shut down the rest of our time. Bea tried to get me to talk, but I couldn’t be present enough to get any words out. In the end, she told me to email or call if I wanted to talk before we met again.

I don’t reach out, but by the next appointment, I have lots and lots of writing for her to read. Bea reads, and responds as she reads. I hide under my blanket, and squeeze cloud pillow.

*I thought we agreed the rupture was about both of us. I thought we agreed that we both made mistakes.*

“The rupture in the spring was about both of us, we do agree about that,” she says gently.

“Then why did you say that?” The words burst out of me.

“Can you tell me what I said?” She asks.

“You said that the mad feelings weren’t about you, that was why you weren’t worried about my mad making you leave, because it had nothing to do with you! And you said I overreacted!”

“Oh…..okay.” Bea takes a deep breath. “I wasn’t speaking about you directly when I brought up overreacting. I’m sorry you heard it that way. I wasn’t trying to personalize it, not at all. I just meant that in general, when people have overreactions, it usually means something from their past has been triggered. For me, it’s usually emotional overreaction, or it means me getting very defensive. Those overreactions aren’t solely directed at the person or event that caused them. It helps me to see that, so I don’t react badly. That’s all I was saying. I wasn’t pointing a finger at any part of you.”

Shame, blame, and hurt all flood me. I don’t say anything.

After a while, Bea asks if she should keep reading and I tell her that she can.

*I thought we agreed that my reaction to the awful Monday was very big and that you experienced it as very out of proportion because you expected the adult to be on board and to help control things, to function and cope as well as she had been but that in reality there was no adult on board and hadn’t been for several days, it was just me on board and I didn’t have a really secure relationship with you, just this very new, fragile, tentative, sort of testing out trusting you thing, and with that context the big reaction and big hurt made more sense. Lashing out, being mean, none of that was acceptable and there were better ways to express myself and tell you I needed help and was really hurt and scared, but put into context it you could understand why I had all the big scared feelings on the bad Monday.*

“I agree with all of this, about the adult not being on board and that your reaction made a lot more sense to me once I knew that.” She says.

“Because I failed,” I say, tears streaming down my face now.

“What do you mean you failed?”

“I….I screwed up. I failed and I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want that to happen again.” I sob.

“How do you think you failed?” Bea asks gently.

“Because…….you…..expectations. I can’t meet them. I’m not good enough.”

Bea doesn’t respond right away, and when she does, she sound sad. “My expectations were, well, they were more about how things had been going, not about me needing you to meet certain expectations. It was an assumption I made, a wrong assumption that the adult had been doing such a great job using her coping skills, I assumed she was on board and those coping skills would kick in. I shouldn’t have made that assumption. I was wrong.”

“You said you had to lower your expectations. I failed.” I’m wailing and whining now, but I can’t stop myself. This hurts.

“Yeah,” she says sympathetically. “I hurt your feelings really badly, and I’m sorry. This is painful. What I should have said was I had to adjust my assumptions, that I had gotten used to the adult being on board and using all her tools to cope and function. I needed to adjust because it wasn’t the adult on board, was it? It was you― the teen. And you are at a different place than the adult. Does that make sense?”

“Maybe. Maybe.” I’m a little calmer, but then I think of something awful, and the wailing starts up again. “What if I can’t meet your expectations this time?”

“This time, I can honestly say that I have no expectations beyond you just continuing to keep working on this stuff. I’m still getting to know this part, and you are still getting to know and trust me. Right?”

“Okay. Okay. Maybe.” I sigh. “I’m still worried. And scared.”

“That’s all right. It’s okay to feel like that, we’ll keep talking about it and just take things slow. There’s no rush.” Her voice is sincere. She means it. I feel calmer with her words.

Later, at home, I start to think about overreactions. I think about it a lot and when I sit down to write, hundreds, thousands of words pour out of me onto the paper. When I finish, I can’t believe I’ve written this, and I am filled with fear and shame and anxiety. But I take it with me to therapy, anyway.

When I arrive, Bea greets me and tells me she has something she wants to share with me from the SP book. Inwardly, I groan. I need her to not be shrinky today. Everything I have written could turn really shrinky and and I need that not to happen.

“What is it?” I ask quietly as I sit down.

“I’d read it before, but it seems so fitting right now. There’s a whole section about enactments and overreactions. It’s nothing bad, nothing scary,” she says as I hide my face with cloud pillow.

“I think maybe you should read my notebook first. It might….well, I just….it might sort of go together,” I tell her quietly.

She suggests that maybe the SP pages might give some context, and so I agree that we can look at those first. I don’t want to, but I also can’t give her my notebook when she feels so disconnected from me.

Bea pauses for a minute. “Do you want to look at the SP thing, or do you want me to read your book first?”

I shrug. “I don’t care. Whatever seems best to you.” I sound far away, and almost robotic.

Bea notices, and just like that she is back to being Bea. “I sort of think you agreed to reading the SP pages because I wanted to read them. It feels to me like you might have some important things written down that you really want to look at today.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I can’t un-disconnect myself.

“I think we should work with your notebook first. That feels important.” She says softly.

I get my book out of my bag, but then I can’t hand it over.

“Alice, how far away are you right now?”

“Far….sort of far.”

“Okay. Okay. Maybe it felt a little scary to have me bring up SP?”

“I don’t know. I just….I don’t want you to be shrinky. Okay? Because…..it could….you could go….” I trail off.

“I’m here, and I’m not shrinky. I can see how hard this is for you. I’m sure me bringing up SP stuff right away this morning didn’t help with that. But I am here with you.” Bea’s words comfort me. It feels like she sees the problem and is here.

I flip through my book, scanning the pages I had written. “This shouldn’t be so hard.”

“It is hard. This work is hard. It’s hard to let someone in, especially when we already feel vulnerable. It’s hard.”

“Okay,” I breathe, “Okay.” And I hand my notebook over.

First, I don’t like that word. Overreaction. It feels bad. It brings up all the other words my mom like to use..,.drama queen, over sensitive. It feels the same. Overreaction makes me feel blame and shame for not being perfect, for feeling what I feel, for not being able to ignore my feelings and behave. My mother’s favorite thing to tell me, anytime I was emotional. “Don’t be a drama queen.” “Oh, Alice, she just always has to be the drama queen.” Even jokingly, said in a playful tone, “Oh! She’s our little drama queen!” Or, “Alice has always tended towards the dramatic.” That’s the first thing, it’s hard to even get past that word, the blame and shame and the feelings that word means, that I should not feel how I felt, that I am out of line.

Bea stops reading, and starts to speak. I stop her before she can form the words. “Just read all of it please. Just read it all first.”

“Okay. I can do that.” Her voice is soft, reassuring.

I would have said, even a week ago, I would have said that my reaction to that bad Monday (which actually was a Wednesday but was the first appointment that week) was not an overreaction. I would have agreed that everything later was, but not that day. I would have argued that showing up to therapy, triggered and vulnerable and needing you to be there, and you not being there was awful and that my reaction was in line with that. I would have argued that having a therapy session ―when I really needed you― and me not even needing to be there, because rationally, logically, that session was not about me. It was you, processing insurance stuff, and the email you had just read, and trying to figure out how to handle the insurance stuff, but initially, it was not about me, I didn’t need to be there.

I’m probably saying this wrong and I will probably be in trouble for being blaming, but please, just keep reading. I’m not blaming.

I would have argued that my reaction to that, my fears that I had needed too much and broken you, my hurt that you weren’t there, my fear that you were looking for a way to get rid of me, was not an overreaction. I still hate that word. But maybe it was. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and maybe I did overreact.

Maybe it’s more fair to say that I wasn’t reacting just to that day. Don’t get shrinky here, okay? Because it was about you in some ways. Even if the events that day hadn’t been extremely triggering, I still would have been hurt, and there would have been mistrust and fear. But I don’t think as much.

That whole day parallels the way my mom reacted over and over and over to me. I’d go to her, panicked or sad or mad or whatever, with all these feelings and no idea how to handle them, just drowning in them, and she would just check out. It was terrifying, to be left so alone with everything. She’d be there, right next to me, but not there, talking and talking and talking about something that had nothing to do with me, she could have been talking to anyone. And if I even dared to get upset or mad about that, she would accuse me of being a drama queen. She would blame me, “Don’t be such a drama queen. Life isn’t that hard.” If I didn’t stop my behavior, if I didn’t straighten up my act then, there would be the silent treatment until I did. Ms. Perfect would take over and fix everything. Things would go on as if nothing had ever happened.

It seems so clear now, how much that day parallels my Mom’s actions. I wouldn’t have been so upset and hurt if I hadn’t experienced that over and over and over. Me showing up distressed, and emotional, you not being present. Me getting upset and you not understanding why because all you could see was that you were just talking about insurance. Me freaking out and being angry, and you choosing to ignore my rage. Ms. Perfect finally taking over.

But what happened with you is different. Because you came back. That was hard to trust for a long time, because that was new. And you wanted to talk about what happened and hear what I really had to say. That was new, too.

I’m afraid to tell you all this, because I don’t want shrinky Bea. But I think this has to be worked through before anything else. Even little things, like when I tell you I am sure that my feeling ABC is silly, that’s my way of preempting the drama queen accusations I still expect to hear. All the uncertainty around you being able to handle my stuff and really be there, that is from this mom stuff. So. That’s it, that’s all of it. And I’m sorry for all of it.

Bea sets my book down on her lap, and lets out a deep breath. “I don’t like that word anymore, either. Overreaction is not a good word, and I am cringing that I used it. I am so sorry that you felt blame when I used it. I think a better thing to have said would be to call it disproportionate.”

“That still feels bad,” I whisper.

“Yeah. I get that. Can I say something? Remind you of something?” She asks.

“Okay.”

“I did mess up. Your feelings were, and are valid. I hurt your feelings, and you were really scared. Just because my misattunement brought up all the feelings you had every time your mom checked out and left you alone with your emotions, that doesn’t make your hurt over my actions less real. It’s an and, not an or. Does that make sense?” Bea asks.

I nod, and then realizing she can’t see me because I’m hiding under my blanket, say, “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

“It was really scary for you to feel so alone, with me and with your mom.” Bea says quietly. “I can see how my actions mirrored hers, almost perfectly. Even my first attempt at setting a boundary, at not reinforcing the distortions……in my attempt to not reinforce those beliefs, and my worry over behaving like your mother, I did just that.”

“But we figured it out. And you won’t ignore me anymore.” I whisper.

“No, no I won’t, not as a choice. I know that wasn’t a helpful boundary for you. But I can’t promise that I won’t have days where I’m misattuned. I hope though, that if you are feeling ignored, you will be able to tell me that.”

“Maybe. I’ll try.” I can’t promise that I will, because I can so easily fall into the dark and twisty place when I feel ignored and left alone. But I can try.

“Good. That’s good.” She says.

“Bea?”

“Yeah? I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry I behaved so badly.” I’m sobbing now, as guilt and shame and grief threaten to pull me under.

“I don’t think that’s fair to say. You reacted. You were scared. I know that.”

“I was awful. I’m terrible, I’m so, so sorry. It wasn’t fair and I’m mean and bad and awful and I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.” I can’t stop. I’m on a rollercoaster going downhill and I can’t stop the tears or the pain at looking at my behavior. I was terrible. I treated her terribly.

“You are not mean. You said some mean things, that does not make you mean. You are not bad, or awful, or anything else. You reacted emotionally, and yes, it was disproportionate, but it was real and I did hurt you. I can hold that, and at the same time know that all the rage and mean wasn’t about me. That’s what I was trying to explain the other day. It’s okay. We are okay, and you are okay. All right?” She’s stern now, kind but stern. She needs me to hear her.

“I’m still sorry.” I say the words through my tears.

Bea murmurs soothing things until I start to calm down. Then Bea wonders if different parts had a different relationship with my mom.

We talk about the parts and their relationships with my Mom. The little girl loves her mom, and just became who she needed to be to be loved. She just locked away all the questions she had about not being protected and not be good enough to be herself. There’s grief there, sometimes, but overall, the little girl knows it wasn’t about her, it was about her mom’s inability to cope, and she just holds all the good parts of her mom and none of the blame or shame of not being good enough. The adult is able to have this easy, on the surface friendship with her mom. She knows her mom’s flaws, and can even accept them. She doesn’t expect emotional support, or even authenticity or depth from her mom, but she likes chatting with her and hanging out.

The teen’s relationship however, is a mess. As I try to describe it, Bea says, “That’s part of where this push pull dynamic comes from. The teen’s…..probably even really once you were a preteen….all teens have big emotions, and confusing feelings and thoughts, but the Kenny stuff, the abuse added to that, and all teens start to separate from their parents, but it was maybe harder for you, because the teen didn’t really have that secure base, she didn’t have that soft place to land as she went out and explored. And teens need that. They need someone who is bigger, stronger, and wiser that can let them go, and yet still be there. Teens need to push boundaries and question things, and they need a safe person to be able to do that. They need a safe grownup to turn to and they need to be seen. You really needed to be seen, because so much of you was hidden for so long. All teens feel this sort of self conscious shame at times, but your shame was so much bigger and all encompassing, partly from the abuse, and I think, too, from not being seen. That’s how we beat shame, by being seen.” Bea is doing that thinking out loud thing again, but it’s okay, because she gets it. She gets how I feel, why the teen’s relationship with her mom is such a mess, and why that makes it so hard to just trust Bea to be safe. As she’s talking, I can see exactly why the teen part of me feels the way she does and acts out the way she does. All those “borderline traits” make sense.

When it’s time to go, I realize we hadn’t read Bea’s SP thing.

“We can always look at it next time if you want to,” she assures me. “This was much more important.”

“I could read it. I do have the book.”

“That’s right, I keep forgetting that. I’ll write down the page numbers for you, okay?” She offers.

“Okay. Thanks,” I say.

When I leave therapy, I feel pretty grounded. It’s only later when I read the SP book that everything gets all stirred up again.

Teens and shrinky cupcakes

So, we talked about the shrinky cupcake. I had been okay all week. Emailing had given me my connection to Bea back, and up until Wednesday morning, I was okay. As I walked into her office, though, the teen’s anxiety, embarrassment and hurt took center stage in my head. I did what I always do in those moments; I shoved the teen aside and let Ms. Perfect run the show.

Bea isn’t fooled by Ms. Perfect any longer, but she will let Ms. Perfect have her bubble of perfection for a bit before Bea pops that bubble. We talked about Halloween and school activities I had organized, and I showed Bea pictures from the Halloween festival in our town square. (Side note, I would love to live in Stars Hollow because the town seems so great with all their wacky festivals, but in all actuality, the town that hubby and I live in is very much like stars hollow― complete with the town square and a gazebo, a diner with great coffee and many, many festivals for weird and wacky things)

Eventually Bea said, “I think Ms. Perfect is here today. I can tell because of the here-not-here feeling and the upbeat chatter. I’m wondering if there are other parts that would like to talk but are feeling scared or upset?” Bea really doesn’t pull any punches anymore when Ms. Perfect is around. I hate it sometimes, but it is a good thing because if you aren’t straight forward like that, Ms. Perfect is very good at avoiding things and changing the subject.

As soon as Bea outed Ms. Perfect, all the teen’s feelings rushed back in. I looked at my hands, picked my fingers, and didn’t answer.

“We need to talk about the cupcake.” Her tone was gentle and calm, but firm. She wasn’t going to budge on this.

I grabbed blue cloud pillow off the couch and hid my face. “Maybe you do, but I don’t need to talk about it.” The teen’s words shot out from my mouth before I could gain control of the situation.

“I know. You really don’t want to talk about this. I just think that I upset you, and you have every right to be mad at me. But we do need to talk about this.”

“Why? Why do we have to talk about something that wasn’t even a thing until you turned it into a shrinky thing?” I snapped.

“I guess, well, because I did turn it into a thing and we need to talk about that. Otherwise, it is like how you grew up, and that can feel lonely and awful. I think its better, even if it feels hard and uncomfortable, to air things out. I don’t want things festering and sitting between us, and I know you don’t like it when things feel like that. It makes the relationship feel unsafe.” Bea answers slowly, like she is trying to find the words to explain to me why she thinks it’s important we talk this out.

“But I wasn’t upset! I was fine. It was all fine until you turned it into a shrinky thing. I wasn’t upset until you did that.”

“It really upsets you when I make things feel shrinky. I wasn’t trying to do that. I know did, and I’m sorry. I was worried, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t stuck with bad feelings, like worrying that I was expecting something of you because I gave you a gift, or feeling like I crossed a boundary that you had set by telling me earlier in the week that you were ignoring your birthday. I didn’t want you stuck with that all week.”

“But I wasn’t! I was fine! I didn’t feel any of those things! I wasn’t stuck with any bad feelings until you made everythung go shrinky right before you were leaving and then I was stuck with those feelings for a week!” My face is buried in cloud pillow, and I feel like I am yelling because there is anger in my voice, but while the words come out short and snappy, they are said barely above a whisper.

“Okay. I thought you looked uncomfortable when I gave you the cupcake. Maybe that is my stuff, and not yours. Can you tell me what you felt when I gave it to you?”

I sigh. “That it was nice of you.”

“What about below the surface?” Bea pushes, just a bit. The way she says it, it’s like a gentle nudge.

I stare at the floor, at my hands, at the bin of stuffed toys sitting on the floor near me. After what feels like forever, I ask, “Can I have the blanket?” Sometimes I say *my* and other times I say *the*. It seems to be the little girl and the grown up who will ask for *my blanket*, and the teen who refuses to call it hers, even though Bea calls it mine.

“Sure.” I hear her get up, and then she covers me with the blanket.

I sit there, hiding and not wanting to talk, trying to find the words. Realizing that my parts all felt differently, I decide I can safely and easily talk about the little girl and maybe the grown up’s reactions. “The little girl……for her, it really was simple. She was happy to get cake.” I shrug.

“It makes sense that different parts felt different,” Bea says. “I’m glad the little girl was happy.”

“The…..the grown up……that was…..well, she thought it was nice of you, but it also made her….sad…..sort of nostalgic for…..I guess for birthdays in years past, for the time when she would have danced in here singing about her birthday and expecting a cupcake because, well, I guess because Grandpa believed she was a gift and should be celebrated and she believed it because he did. And thats not……it doesn’t feel like that anymore. The last time my birthday felt like that was six years ago, before Grandpa was sick. I don’t……its sad because things won’t feel like that again. So maybe that is what you saw. It didn’t have anything to do with you. Just sadness and nostalgia for the way things used to be.” My voice cracks as I mention Grandpa, tears streaming down my cheeks as I speak.

“He loved you so much. He really did. And you do deserve to celebrate and to sing and dance on your birthday if you feel like it again. You lost a lot, and it is understandable that you would be sad about it. If that is what I was picking up on, I am truly sorry for making it a thing and upsetting you. And I apologize for not fully picking up on that sad feeling.” Her voice is warm and caring as she talks to me.

“It’s okay. None of the parts are really upset or mad anymore.”

Bea waits, to see if there is more, and when I don’t she asks, “And what about the teen? How did she feel?”

I groan. The teen doesn’t want to discuss this. “That it’s fine. She’s not mad anymore.”

“If she was, that would be okay. And I understand why she was mad with me,” Bea says simply.

“I’m not mad.”

“Okay.”

We sit quietly, Bea waiting patiently, and me trying to find the words, to figure out how to put them together to make sense. “I don’t…..the teen doesn’t….(I was having a lot of trouble keeping the grown up in charge, so while I did try, the teen was definitely running the show.) ……like talking about relationships with the person……you know?”

“I know. It’s incredibly uncomfortable for her.”

“Why is this so hard for me? It’s impossible,” I grumble, frusterated with myself.

“It definitely feels that way, doesn’t it? Why do you think it’s hard?”

Frustrated, and feeling like Bea literally just did the shrink thing of turning a question back around, I snap, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking!”

Bea chuckles softly. She enjoys the teen’s snark. “Very true. I think it’s because for so long the teen had no voice, no one but Ms. Perfect had a voice, and so some of it is learning that it’s okay. I think some of it is when the teen did use her voice, it wasn’t very well received. I want to know what she has to say, and I promise to listen and to try to understand.”

I sigh. Take a deep breath. “I……..I thought….” my voice wobbles. “I thought it was………………. nice. I liked that you thought……………. about me not just here (in Bea’s office). It….it was like……it made me feel like you cared. It……….felt……..good.” I feel vulnerable, exposed. This feels dangerous. I do not like to tell people when they make me feel cared about, or that I like feeling cared about.

“I do care,” Bea tells me, in her serious voice. “I know this feels vulnerable, and uncomfortable, but these are all good things to feel. And it is safe to feel them.”

“No. No no. This isn’t……not good. It’s not okay.”

“Because it feels like too much?” Bea asks.

“No. Yes. No.” Frustrated, I snap at Bea again, “I don’t know! Okay? I just don’t know how to explain this.”

“That’s okay. Just take your time. There’s no rush.”

“When……..as soon as……if I feel cared about then…….I think what you felt, what you noticed was…..I felt like you cared, and that felt good but right away, then I feel bad and I can’t…….it’s just…..so then it just has to go away, all the feelings I just have to shut them down.” I shake my head. I’m not making sense.

“Why do the bad feelings come up?” Bea’s voice is the soothing one she uses for the most hurt parts of me.

“Because……..” I don’t want to answer this. The teen doesn’t want to answer this. I feel tears falling again, shame heats my face and every muscle in my body is tense and shaking. I only want to run away. This feels too painful to say.

“Because…..?” Bea prompts.

“I…..it’s like……..I don’t get to……I mean, because I don’t have the right…………………. to want ………..people ……….to care…………..about me……………I’m not good. I can’t……I can’t do this. I’m sorry, I can’t.” Huge, wracking sobs come pouring out of me. I can’t stop shaking.

“You don’t feel like you deserve to be cared about. That is painful. And it is not true. You do deserve to be cared about.” Bea has tears in her voice. I’ve made her sad.

I want to tell her it’s more than that. I want to tell her that bad things happen when you feel those good feelings of being cared about. I want to tell her that I desperately want someone to care about me, just me, even with all the bad and messy and complicated pieces that make up who I am, that I want that, crave that, but it’s not okay. It’s not okay because I don’t deserve that, and when I think I have it, very bad things happen. So I can’t. I can’t feel the warmth of being cared about without all the icky feelings creeping in. I want to have a way to explain this without sounding like a crazy person. But I’m unable to weave the words together in a way that makes sense.

Bea doesn’t ask for more explanation, and she doesn’t tell me to stop crying. She just sits with me, letting me cry until my sobs slow and I can breathe again. She murmurs things about the teen really not liking herself, and how that is painful, and how the teen got so many negative messages about herself, and how she really does enjoy the quirky, snarky teen. Bea reminds the teen that if the teen were 21, she is someone Bea would have a beer with (this was something Bea told the teen a long time ago when the teen accused Bea of liking Ms. Perfect and only wanting the teen to be like Ms. Perfect.)

As awful and painful and uncomfortable as it was to talk about, and as unfinished as the conversation felt to the teen who still feels a need to explain better, strangely, I feel lighter. Nothing bad happened, Bea is still here, she didn’t call me crazy or seem confused by the complicated mess of my feelings around being cared about. And, the teen wants to write some in her notebook to share with Bea. She want to sort it out. She doesn’t want to feel bad anymore.

Repaired: part six

On Wednesday, July 11, I walk into Bea’s office, feeling scared, but not as scared as I have been. I feel vulnerable, too, and it shows when I walk in, unable to look at Bea. Today, she notices, she sees me.

“I was really glad to get the teen’s email this morning. To know that she is able to feel some of those things. And I want her to know that she is right. I do care.”

I don’t say anything, just sit down, my face reddening. Bea already has my blanket sitting on the couch.

“You know,” she says slowly, as I grab a pillow to hide behind, “Let’s just notice for a moment we are safe. That nothing bad is happening. Maybe feel the pillow in your arms, hear the birds. Just take a moment. We aren’t in any hurry. We don’t have to rush into anything.”

I try, I really do, but it’s hard. I’m so scared that I have made a bigger mess.

“We don’t have to do anything today, we don’t have to talk about anything. Maybe we just need to focus on safety and being here this morning. That’s okay. Take a moment, think about what will help you feel safe. What do you need?”

I do think about it. At first, I don’t know, I’m uncertain. But then I relize what I do need. “I need…..I don’t….I need for…….. this to be fixed…..if….I can’t do nothing today because until we talk about it and it’s…..resolved, I’m going to stay worried and anxious.”

“Okay. We can talk about things. I think to do that though, you have to stay here, at least here enough to talk. What is the anxiety connected to?” Bea asks.

“I don’t know. Something bad is going to happen.”

“Okay, good. That’s a starting place, right? What are the things you worry about happening?”

“There’s no list, not…I guess it’s like nothing, no things to write down, not something I can tell you. I’m not worried about anything…..just something bad is going to happen.” I stumble over words and explanation. This is difficult to describe.

“Is is more of a feeling, just a general sort of thing?” Bea gets it.

I nod. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“So, I think that sort of generalized worry that we cannot pinpoint is our trauma brain. It’s normal, and the feelings are real. This is again where we have to tell ourselves, feelings aren’t facts. I can’t promise you nothing bad will happen, because bad things do happen, but we also have to realize that it’s not likely. Right? I mean, what are the chances a plane is going to crash into my office?” Bea’s voice is sympathetic, but she isn’t going to let me worry about things unlikly to happen.

“No……it’s not that……..not like that……I don’t worry…..it’s not worries about accidents. More….it’s maybe more about people.” I don’t know how to say what is in my head. I don’t know that I have the words or the language to really define it. I just know that the general something bad is going to happen worries aren’t about accidents or things like that.

“Okay, Okay. That’s good. This is helpful. Is it more worries that people will let you down somehow, or is it more worries that people will hurt you?”

It’s too much, and overwhelmed, I hide under my blanket, hugging cloud pillow to me. “I don’t know, people……. leaving me, rejecting me, not wanting to deal with me.” I wish I had the words to explain the fear I have surrounding my relationships.

“So, attachment stuff then. When attachment stuff is triggered…..that fear, that worry that something bad will happen, it’s very real. Attachment trauma, there really isn’t a list of worries. It’s very young, such early stuff, it’s from this time when we were too little and too helpless to care for ourselves, and so any rupture, any sign that our people were leaving us, that would have meant…anniliahtion back then. Developmental trauma, attachment trauma, this is all to do with very early years, so young we probably have no memories of it. With you, I think the trauma of sexual abuse compounds and even confuses the issue, but…this, what you are describing, it is attachment trauma.” Bea is speaking slowly, but with certainty.

“So….not crazy then?” I ask.

“Not crazy. This is a real thing, and when it’s triggered, it is incredibly scary and incredibly painful. I’m not sure I realized how deep…..well, how deep your attachment trauma runs. I see now I wasn’t seeing that, and I’m sorry. I’m aware of it now,” she tells me, and I think how well I have hidden this from her. I know when my impulse to freak out over a relationship is not *normal* and most offen, Ms. Perfect is really good at stopping those reactions.

We sit quietly for a moment, and then Bea asks me if I am here. “Here enough,” I say.

“Are you here enough to talk?” She checks.

“Yeah….it’s just hard. But I am here.”

“Okay. Then we will talk about all this scary stuff. Slowly, and as safely as possible.” She is using the voice that she uses when she is speaking to the little girl, that gentle, soothing voice.

“Okay. I can do this.” I hug the pillow and I feal my stomach twist in fear, but I mean what I am saying.

“I want to start by saying I am sorry I didn’t recognize your cry for help. I think, well, I know my own stuff got in the way. You are right about that. I was hurt, and I reacted from that hurt place. It doesn’t make it okay, but I was really struggling with how you could think those things of me after all this time, given our relationship, and I reacted from that place. I chose to ignore it, because in my hurt, I read it as rage.”

“But I— the teen doesn’t have a relationship with you! You don’t know her anymore than she knows you. I mean…that’s unfair.” The words jump out of me, frustrated and slightly angry.

“You’re right. We were building a relationship when all this happened. But you are right, we don’t have a relationship. Not yet. I didn’t think of that. It also….well, as I said, I was expecting coping skills like reality testing, to kick in. But I don’t even know what coping skills the teen has. We need to spend some time on the relationship, working on that safety and trust, maybe building some skills.” Bea sounds….well, like she means it when she says she wants to work on a relationship with the teen.

“There were no coping skills. That’s why I emailed you! I just wanted…..” I trail off when I realize what I was about to say, horrified that I had been about to admit to wanting anything.

“Wanted what? You just wanted…..?” Bea prompts me after several seconds tick by and I don’t continue.

“I…well, I just….ugh. I told you thing get all twisted in my head. I told you I go to the dark and twisty place where everyone hates me and……I mean, I thought…I just….I wish you had just said, *Alice stop. You’re in the dark twisty place. Those things aren’t true.* Or something.”

Bea is silent, thinking. I can hear her fingers tapping on her chair. “I don’t know that I could have done that. I don’t want to presume to know what is going on in your head, or to impose my reality on you as the true reality.”

“Maybe ask me then? If I’m in that place? I don’t know. I mean, sometimes I know I’m there, sort of, but…….it’s too risky to say it or ask someone, I just…I don’t know. But you not acknowledging those feelings, that just made them true in my mind. And then I did rage. Before, if you had just been able to say, “Those things aren’t true. I know they feel bad, but they aren’t true, I don’t think those things. I think you are in the dak and twisty place, you need to come out and I’ll be here waiting. I think that would have changed this. That’s all I wanted. Not….logic and explanations.”

“You wanted me to help you stop the distortions. Which is what my boundary of not responding to them was meant to do. It felt like responding to them would reinforce them.”

“Ignoring them reinforced them.” I tell her..

“I see that now. I think….I was feeling this need to set a boundary, but I set the wrong one, and even when I was clear that a boundary was needed, I maintained a boundary that was unhelpful.”

“I get not wanting to reinforce distortions, but can’t you acknowledge them without doing that? Can’t you just reassurance they are not true?” I don’t understand.

“You know, that’s a boundary. You wanted a boundary set. I just set the wrong one. I’ve never felt a need for boundaries with the little girl. I think the teen wanted a boundary set, and I was picking up on that.”

“No….I didn’t want a boundary. Boundaries are mean, they mean go away, you are a bother, I don’t want to deal with you….. no! I don’t like boundaries. And I don’t want you to change everything.”

“I’m not changing anything. Anything that changes we will do together. I’m not going to spring a bunch of changes on you, okay? But we need to talk about boundaries. Boundaries aren’t bad. They don’t have to feel bad to either person. Like right now, you have set a boundary. The blanket is a physical boundary. But even with the boundary there is a connection between us, there is attunement and a feeling of us both being present. I don’t see the blanket as a go away….it is what you need to feel safe, and so I feel glad you are taking care of yourself, that you can set a boundary and feel safe. And, dare I say, that boundary making you feel safer…… perhaps it makes it possible for us to feel more connection than we would without the boundary.”

I shake my head. “I don’t like boundaries. Boundaries are scary.”

“They can be. But I think once you feel, experience healthy boundaries, well, then they aren’t so scary.” She says gently.

“They are. Well, I guess I don’t really know about boundaries. My Mom’s boundaries are…..I weird. Maybe just all over the place.”

“Like your therapist’s have been lately?” Bea sounds, disapointed in herself, or something.

I think about what she has said. “No… not like that. Hers…..either they didn’t exist, I think….like, I just….I did what she wanted, dressed how she wanted, acted like she wanted, I was…like I just was part of her…I don’t know.” I sigh, not sure how to explain this.

“There’s a shrinky word for that. Enmeshment. It means your mom viewed you as extension of herself.”

“Yeah…..and I was loved and accepted and we were close as long as I was…..well, being like her. But if I didn’t….if I diagreed….she just……I don’t know. She would be upset. Then she set these boundaries….over silly things. Like really, truly, silly things. Like one time, I didn’t like these one shoes that she liked and so I just like got a different pair and she was really not happy with me. There was a boundary set then. Well, I think anyway. Silent treatment.” I blink away tears. It still hurts now, thinking about it.

“That is a boundary. Wow. No wonder me ignoring your feelings about me expressing anxiety over insurance was painful. It felt like I was giving you the silent treatment.” Bea’s voice has that sound in it, the one that means things are falling into place and she is making sense of things.

“You know….I don’t….I mean….well, you know what, never mind.” Words tumble out of me, a mess of them, blocking what I really need to say.

“Whatever it is, you can say it. I’m listening. It’s okay,” Bea reassures me.

“I don’t like it when you say it was just about you expressing worries over insurance. That’s not the story, not at all. I wish you would get that.” I whisper the words, cringing as I say them.

“You’re right. That’s not the whole story. But I do want to say, it’s important that we discuss insurance…that the adult and I talk about those things.”

“But it wasn’t a conversation! It was you freaking out and not even aware of what was going on for me! You can’t say it was us having a conversation, because you were talking…..at me. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, it isn’t about insurance! It’s about how you were talking!” I feel like I am shouting, but really, I am speaking firmly, and louder than usual.

“You know….what you wrote, asking me to imagine the situation, and describing it from your viewpoint, I….well, I have been that client before. I have had my therapist not be as present as I needed, and I have left sessions feeling unseen and unheard and hurt.”

“Except this wasn’t even my session! Not really. You can not compare the two. We have had sessions where you weren’t as attuned as I needed, and I’ve left feeling bad. But this, no. Wednesday was something else. It wasn’t my session, because I never….this was nothing about me, it wasn’t a case of I shared where I was at and you weren’t super present. This was you talking and spinning out from the moment I sat down. It wasn’t even a session! I mean, I don’t even know why I was there.” I’m being blunt, but I can’t, I won’t sugar coat it.

“You’re right. The two things don’t compare. Which I was going to say, that I have experienced the unattuned sessions, and so I can imagine how painful this was, how scary. I am so sorry, I really am. I knew the it was bad, I wanted to stop, to erase it, to have a redo, because I knew it was bad. And I am so sorry,” Bea says, sadly.

“I know. I know you are sorry. It’s okay. It was a bad day and a bad mistake, and I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, or call it something it’s not, but I’m not mad or upset or hurt anymore.” As I say the words, I realize they are true.

“If you were, that would be okay,” she reminds me. Bea worries that I forgive to make sure people don’t leave me.

“No…It’s okay. Honestly, I was more hurt and upset that I was ignored when I was hurting and scared. I just wish you had said to me, from the first email, *hey, listen, those things aren’t true. I don’t feel that way at all. You need to get out of the dark twisty place so we can talk, because I can’t help you when you are there. So come out now, I want to help you.* You know?” I say.

“Now that, that sounds like you are channeling your Grandma.” Bea sounds like she is smiling.

“Yeah….that is something she would say. She didn’t….well, she would just tell me what was and wasn’t okay. She didn’t….she made things very clear. I guess that is boundaries?”

“Yes. Your Grandma had good boundaries.” Bea agrees.

“She really did, if I think about it. She didn’t….not like mom. Grandma didn’t ignore me when I messed up or didn’t agree with her. She just, well, she just said it. Jusf plain, just like that.”

“And I’m thinking that while I was feeling it would be harsh or feel cruel to just say, hey you are twisting things, maybe that sort of bluntness feels safe to you because your Grandma set boundaries in that way. Straight forward, honest. I need to channel your Grandma, not your mom. Because in my concern of behaving like your mom and trying to avoid it, I did exactly what I was trying not to do.” Bea sighs.

“Well, you definitely don’t remind me of my mom. More of my grandma. Not age wise, but just….you feel the same, sometimes.” I shrug. It’s not something I have words for. “Like hubby feels the same as my grandpa sometimes. He reminds me of him, he always has.”

Bea laughs. “That is a very big compliment. I know how much your grandma means to you. Thank you.”

“Am I right in saying that what I was wanting from that first email was reassurance and to be told I was in the dark and twisty place….which you said was a boundary. And you felt it was me raging and so there was this feeling of needing to set a boundary……so we both really wanted the same thing?”

“Yes, yes, you are. We both did want the same thing.” Bea chuckles again.

“So….next time….maybe you can set a different boundary sooner?”

“Yes. I can do that,” Bea agrees.

I break the silence by saying what pops into my head. “Hey, you did what you said you would!”

“What do you mean?”

“When……when we talked about Kathy, and I asked you what you would have done…..and you told me? Do you remember?” I ask.

“Yes. I remember that.”

“Well….this rupture, you did what you said you would do.” I smile. Something about that feels right.

“I did? Well, thank goodness I did what I said I would!” Bea laughs, but she is sort of serious, too.

“Yeah….I’m glad you did what you said you would.”

Her tone lignt, Bea says, “You know, that brings up the whole question of enactment. Maybe you needed to see if I would do what I said I would, or maybe I needed to see if I would do what I said……it’s so interesting……”

“Don’t get shrinky,” I say, cutting her off. “And I definitely didn’t cause this mess on purpose.”

“No, enactments aren’t a concious thing. It’s all completely unconscious. But it is interesting, especially in this situation…..”

I cut her off again. “Don’t be shrinky!” I recognize this as a boundary, a need for her to not be shrinky so I can feel safe and secure knowing that Bea is Bea and not a cold analytical shrink.

“You brought it up,” she laughs.

“Just talk to your shrinky friends about this,” I tell her. It’s such a teen response, that I laugh, too.

Laughing, she agrees. “Okay. But the grown up might want to talk about this one day, and when she does want to, we can. It will be okay.” .

“Maybe. Not now.” I am stubborn.

“No, not right now. When you are in it, it’s the wrong time for shrinky. I get that. So not right now.” She is so calm, so sure, so caring again. Bea is herself again, she is really back.

“I think it’s okay. I feel okay, this is okay. Nothing bad happened and you did what you said you would.” I breathe out relief and fear and anxiety and anger as I say the words.

“Yes. Nothing bad happened. Actually, something good happened,” Bea says kindly.

“Yeah. And it’s new. Something new. And it was ok.”

“Yes. I think you grew a lot, even if it’s not something we want to happen again, I think there will be more growth and learning, more felt experience from this. I think there was a lot of new things in this for you.”

“Yes. You listened. And didn’t want me to just agree and be…whatever you wanted.” This….this means so much to me. I don’t have words for it, but there is a lightness where the fear of not being what she wanted used to be. The fear isn’t gone because it is old, old fear, but there is less of it there.

“No! Never. I want you to just be you. You are enough. Just like you are, you are enough and you deserve to be seen and heard and cared for just for being you.” Bea is adamant, and while I think she has said this before, everytime she says it, it sinks in a little more.

“Is that….is what I wrote, what you said true?” I ask quietly.

“That I care?” Her voice is neutral, maybe curious about what part of what I wrote.

“Yeah.” Shame floods me as I confirm her guess.

“Yes. Very much so. This is a real relationship. Just because it is therapy doesn’t make it not real. If it weren’t real, and I didn’t care about you, you wouldn’t have been able to hurt me. What you wrote, all of it, is true. Absolutely. I care.” She means it, I can hear it in her voice.

“Okay,” I say. It’s all I can say, because I don’t know how I feel about this. It’s….I want her to care, and I care about her, but I don’t….well, I guess I don’t want to matter. I’m afraid to matter, and there is something painful about having the whole of me accepted so openly. I blink back tears.

After a while, I ask Bea to tell me something regular, and so we talk about dogs and coffee and clothes. When I leave her office, I feel drained, but also more present and peaceful than I have felt in a while.

The wound will never be erased, the scar remains, but it’s not a bad thing. There is beauty to be found in the scars that make us who we are.