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- #49
AnotherUser
Bronze Member
I don’t know what you’ll learn from an account of today’s session with my T. I think at the least, further evidence that the power of symbols and movement of the body really does transcend language.
I was agitated, and arrived with a list, an agenda. I told her how I felt about the ice-queen I am staying with (see entry directly before this one); about how I awake each day into conflict, feeling it coiling about me like a snake as the more agreeable tendrils of sleep withdraw; about how I am conflicted between Romania and the UK; between trying to stay here in a country I definitely don’t like (in order to continue my therapy with my T, rather than a Romanian replacement) and risking the future in Romania, where it is unlikely I can continue the same career that I still have time to rescue, maybe, here in the UK.
And between the developing relationship with the architect, and the impetus to stay in the UK for access to my T.
She asked me how this conflict manifested in my body (you can expect with SP that all such conversations will be returned to how they manifest physically).
I told her of the hollow shoulders; and, especially, a twitch in my eye.
“That’s active right now.” I said.
“Can we explore that?” My T asked. “Is that okay?” Of course it was.
She asked me what the twitch would say if it could speak.
“‘No choice!’” I finally decided. “It’s saying ‘No choice!’ Which is ironic, since the twitch is there exactly because there IS a choice.”
My T asked if we could please attempt to put this conflict into tactile terms - by laying out two objects on the floor representing the conflict; representing the choices in the conflict.
Fine, I said. She put down two blue plastic cups, lip down on the floor in front of me, and asked me to reach out physically and name the choices which were causing the twitch.
(nb There are no real names used in this journal)
“Julia.” I said, naming the architect as my arm reached over to touch the cup on the left.
I moved my arm over to the cup on the right, and tapped it.
“You.” I said.
What follows does not represent a Hollywood-style therapy ‘breakthrough’. This is material that I unearthed with a short course of cognitive therapy in the early nineties - the only other therapy I have ever had. My T knew that this material was available to me and to her if she needed it, but has avoided asking about it. At that point re-treading this material seemed to her just a potentially re-traumatising re-run. But in this case, it seemed, it had direct current relevance to my current conflict. Today, I wanted her to hear it as more than just ‘background’ material.
“There’s something you didn’t want to hear before, in April, that I want to tell you now,” I said, as the two plastic cups looked up dumbly at me. She’s not keen to hear it, but this time she doesn’t stop me...
October, 1979. I’m thirteen years old and standing on the landing of the family house. Who knows where dad is today? Probably beavering away at freelance work, beyond the physical division that split off his two rooms from my mother’s larger section of the house two months ago, in the wake of the decree nisi for the divorce.
On my left is my sixteen year-old sister. She’s in tears. She’s pregnant. On the left is my mother, and she’s asking me the question that will change my life.
‘Whose side are you on?’ She asks. There’s no kindness or mercy in those eyes. They’re waxwork eyes, it seems.
In case you didn’t get it before, I’m just about 13 at this point. For context, my mother has spent the summer sealing up the gaps between the radiators and the walls with cement. We tell visitors that it’s mice. In fact my mother, who this summer past had a fling with one of my sister’s friends (also about 17), believes that this young man now lives in the attic and can crawl through a one-inch gap.
‘Whose side are you on?’ She repeats. ‘You can’t be on both!’
And I go to mum.
I’m too afraid. In my mind’s eye I see my sister’s tears deepening.
But who knows?
‘Right!’ my mum says. Victory!
And that’s basically the end of my life for 13 years, until the cognitive therapy accidentally uncovers the destructive power of this life-event in 1993. Within four months my academic record would fall to terminal decline, and my increasingly odd and obsessive behaviour would drive away most of my friends.
I had no idea what it was about, all those intervening years. Just that my life had stopped and run aground, for some reason I could never fathom.
Back in today, I am in tears in front of my T, who is moved by the story, clearly.
“So,” I say to my T. “I don’t really have a f*cking good experience with choice.”
back in the present, back in the T’s office again and no longer back in the past, the blue cups are looking up at me, representing Julia vs. MyT; my mum vs. my sister...
“If your body could have acted,” my T asked. “What would it have done?”
“Retreated.” I say. That’s an easy one. But at 13, not an option.
I look down with wonder at the cheap blue receptacles on the floor.
“That’s quite a language,” I say. “This language beyond words.”
I was agitated, and arrived with a list, an agenda. I told her how I felt about the ice-queen I am staying with (see entry directly before this one); about how I awake each day into conflict, feeling it coiling about me like a snake as the more agreeable tendrils of sleep withdraw; about how I am conflicted between Romania and the UK; between trying to stay here in a country I definitely don’t like (in order to continue my therapy with my T, rather than a Romanian replacement) and risking the future in Romania, where it is unlikely I can continue the same career that I still have time to rescue, maybe, here in the UK.
And between the developing relationship with the architect, and the impetus to stay in the UK for access to my T.
She asked me how this conflict manifested in my body (you can expect with SP that all such conversations will be returned to how they manifest physically).
I told her of the hollow shoulders; and, especially, a twitch in my eye.
“That’s active right now.” I said.
“Can we explore that?” My T asked. “Is that okay?” Of course it was.
She asked me what the twitch would say if it could speak.
“‘No choice!’” I finally decided. “It’s saying ‘No choice!’ Which is ironic, since the twitch is there exactly because there IS a choice.”
My T asked if we could please attempt to put this conflict into tactile terms - by laying out two objects on the floor representing the conflict; representing the choices in the conflict.
Fine, I said. She put down two blue plastic cups, lip down on the floor in front of me, and asked me to reach out physically and name the choices which were causing the twitch.
(nb There are no real names used in this journal)
“Julia.” I said, naming the architect as my arm reached over to touch the cup on the left.
I moved my arm over to the cup on the right, and tapped it.
“You.” I said.
What follows does not represent a Hollywood-style therapy ‘breakthrough’. This is material that I unearthed with a short course of cognitive therapy in the early nineties - the only other therapy I have ever had. My T knew that this material was available to me and to her if she needed it, but has avoided asking about it. At that point re-treading this material seemed to her just a potentially re-traumatising re-run. But in this case, it seemed, it had direct current relevance to my current conflict. Today, I wanted her to hear it as more than just ‘background’ material.
“There’s something you didn’t want to hear before, in April, that I want to tell you now,” I said, as the two plastic cups looked up dumbly at me. She’s not keen to hear it, but this time she doesn’t stop me...
October, 1979. I’m thirteen years old and standing on the landing of the family house. Who knows where dad is today? Probably beavering away at freelance work, beyond the physical division that split off his two rooms from my mother’s larger section of the house two months ago, in the wake of the decree nisi for the divorce.
On my left is my sixteen year-old sister. She’s in tears. She’s pregnant. On the left is my mother, and she’s asking me the question that will change my life.
‘Whose side are you on?’ She asks. There’s no kindness or mercy in those eyes. They’re waxwork eyes, it seems.
In case you didn’t get it before, I’m just about 13 at this point. For context, my mother has spent the summer sealing up the gaps between the radiators and the walls with cement. We tell visitors that it’s mice. In fact my mother, who this summer past had a fling with one of my sister’s friends (also about 17), believes that this young man now lives in the attic and can crawl through a one-inch gap.
‘Whose side are you on?’ She repeats. ‘You can’t be on both!’
And I go to mum.
I’m too afraid. In my mind’s eye I see my sister’s tears deepening.
But who knows?
‘Right!’ my mum says. Victory!
And that’s basically the end of my life for 13 years, until the cognitive therapy accidentally uncovers the destructive power of this life-event in 1993. Within four months my academic record would fall to terminal decline, and my increasingly odd and obsessive behaviour would drive away most of my friends.
I had no idea what it was about, all those intervening years. Just that my life had stopped and run aground, for some reason I could never fathom.
Back in today, I am in tears in front of my T, who is moved by the story, clearly.
“So,” I say to my T. “I don’t really have a f*cking good experience with choice.”
back in the present, back in the T’s office again and no longer back in the past, the blue cups are looking up at me, representing Julia vs. MyT; my mum vs. my sister...
“If your body could have acted,” my T asked. “What would it have done?”
“Retreated.” I say. That’s an easy one. But at 13, not an option.
I look down with wonder at the cheap blue receptacles on the floor.
“That’s quite a language,” I say. “This language beyond words.”
