Approximate reading time: 11 minutes
2021 wasn’t the easiest of therapy years for me. During that year I wrote a couple of poems about my anger/frustrations with my therapist. I consistently left them out when posting my poems these last couple of months. My plan was to post them all together with the finale poem being the one below. But now that I’m here …. all the anger and frustration seems rather insignificant.
I joke that 2021 was the year I was arguing with my therapist….when in actual fact the only person arguing was me.
In my head.
If he said something I disagreed with, I rarely questioned it.
If he said something that I ‘perceived’ to be judgmental… I never checked for clarity, I never spoke up and owned that I felt confused or hurt by it.
All I did was mentally jot it down in my little black book named:
(I have a stockpile of them, aka diaries)
I started my therapy in 2012 with a one-year break in 2019. So essentially that would be 9 years of pent-up mini-frustrations nicely smiled over, pushed down and ignored.
I was a dormant volcano waiting to explode.
I was also becoming very consciously aware of a whole host of unhealthy expectations I was internally lobbing onto the poor man.
There were parts of me that wanted him to be a Compassionate Inquiry Therapist.
There were parts of me that wanted him to be an Internal Family Systems Therapist.
There were parts of me that just didn’t feel like he saw me or validated me enough!
I was nursing a huge gapping validation wound ….and it HAD to be someone else’s fault!!
So I made it his!
(Projection at its worst)
Internally I was pissed!
For months I knew I needed to start speaking up and being more authentic about my feelings and emotions with him….but it felt almost impossible. Growing up I had essentially learnt two ways of dealing with difficult emotions. ‘Shut them off’ and then when you can’t keep them in much longer ‘scream them out’. As a teenager, I remember having monumental screaming matches with my mother. Trying to verbalise my thoughts or feelings in a calm rational manner was not something I learnt how to do at home. Speaking up about anything that hurt, upset or angered me usually resulted in me receiving a long laundry list of all the hurtful things I had done in our relationship.
The emotional tit-for-tat was exhausting.
As a child, your ultimate survival need is to stay connected to your parents. You do what you need to do to ensure that ruptures don’t happen.
But not having the freedom or space to express your negative emotions as a child, or having them validated when you do speak up is beyond draining ….even if you don’t realise it at the time.
Fast forward 30 odd years ….we take what we learn at home and run with it.
As a result, I have always hated any type of conflict.
I was petrified of speaking up in relationships or friendships because the risk of losing the connection with the other person was too great. This is something that I have constantly been working on for the last decade or so but it was still not something I could do with my therapist.
He was just too important.
I needed him too much.
The thought of him getting angry with me and ending our sessions was unbearable.
Even though a large part of me knew he would never do that, the fear still lingered.
And then finally I pulled the bandaid off and I spoke up.
Looking back, I can’t even begin to describe how life-altering that particular therapy session was for me.
That session was like an AHA-wake-up moment!
It is a pretty beautiful space to be in when you feel safe enough to share your anger or negative emotions with someone and they don’t reject you.
That session was when I finally realised the value of having healthy people in your life who allow you to feel angry, who allow you to express honestly what you are feeling and who are able to engage in a conversation about what is actually going on.
That session, I feel, changed the whole dynamics of my relationship with my therapist.
Something shifted in me that day.
Rather than seeing him as someone who I needed to look up to and revere….
I saw him as human for the first time and as an equal.
I shudder now, at my entitlement that he needed to be a different version of a therapist for me to feel validated and seen.
A couple of months after our chat I finally managed to start posting my writing again after an almost 2 year break. I realised with such crystal clear clarity that the only validation I would ever need in this world had to come from myself.
No one else.
These days I have no problem speaking up and challenging him on stuff that I might disagree with. There isn’t one inch of me that is worried he won’t be able to handle me being honest and upfront with him about my emotions.
Incidentally, a funny thing starts happening when you start finding your voice and expressing your frustrations with ‘a healthy other’. When you are not constantly clinging to the hurt or indignation, you might feel at times, you are essentially giving the other person a gift.
You are freeing that person to have their own voice.
You are giving them the opportunity to clarify what they mean, to explain their different opinions and to just be more open and authentic with you.
Nowadays rather than shying away from conflict with new people in my life I almost…dare I say it…invite it. I want to speak up honestly, I want to see how they engage with me if I disagree with something that they say, and I want to see how they will react to me if I express frustration. The biggest change in me these days is that I am no longer petrified of ruptures or rejection in friendships. What scares me even more is being stuck in relationships where I am not allowed to express any negative emotions.
I have had too many of those in my lifetime.
I must admit this lesson has been a hard one to learn, and a long time in the making….
but I feel like it is starting to cement.
So, for that, I am beyond grateful
Written 16th February 2021
Behind the smokescreen
I woke up this morning
Not a single dream
Feeling happy like perhaps
I might burst from the seams
Wrapped up in safety
Overflowing with love
Surely this is what
Every day should be made of
It’s been a good week
I actually made a new friend
We had lunch on Sunday
So nice to get out again
It felt so good to laugh
(It hurt my sides)
So amazing to feel comfortable
And seen in another’s eyes.
It’s been over a week
Since I returned from holiday
Six weeks of doing nothing
In gorgeous, sunny SA
But it’s always emotional
Spending so much time at home
It’s like a jolt to the system
Of how much I’m alone
I adore being an aunt
Spending time with the kids
But it triggers all those feelings
Of what I truly miss
It’s easier in London
No reminders of what’s not there
Easier to shut myself off
Pretend I don’t care
That I don’t still nurse dreams
Of my own family
Overwhelmed at times
By this childless grief in me
But today I’ll be a little kinder
Towards my self
Be conscious and acknowledge
This fictitious shelf
That I place myself on pitifully
So very many times
Like being single at this age
Is a heinous, unforgivable crime
And for the millionth time
In the last decade
I remind myself “I’m on track”
Nothing is delayed
Many people find love
Later in life
I haven’t given up hope
Of someday being a wife
Oh I forgot to mention
“Woop, Woop I’m so proud!”
I finally found the courage
To speak to my therapist out loud
I broached the topic
I didn’t dismiss
My anger and hurt
That I’d been seriously pissed
All the frustration built up
Throughout the years
“Does he truly care?”
Is one of my biggest fears
Well in truthfulness most
Of my parts know he does
Most of them feel
Nothing but love
It’s my exiles that still
Don’t trust him at all
I’m so conscious they are surrounded
By their ever-protective wall
I cried most of the session
I was so angry at him
I didn’t hold back
I certainly didn’t skim
He looked a little heartbroken
But said with authenticity
“I can’t tell you how happy I am
That you could bring this to me”
He said a therapist could wait years
For this moment that might never come
When your client can speak up honestly
About what’s really going on
He said he wondered how often
I had simply walked away
From painful situations
Because I didn’t know what to say
A poignant point
I had to admit
At times I feel like such a hypocrite
Because rather than simply
Admitting that I feel hurt
It’s become so much easier
To ever so quietly divert…
My attention far away
Far away somewhere else
Sometimes it takes years
For my anger to melt
As always, he contained
My emotions beautifully
I didn’t feel any resentment
Or anger boomeranging back to me
He didn’t deflect my feelings
Or deny my reality
He just held the space open
For all my parts to breathe
And I watched amazed
As he descended from
The pedestal my ego
Had gingerly placed him on
With all those qualities of perfection
That I had naively bestowed
I had done this
All those years ago
And there sitting before me
Was just a normal man
Who is brilliant at his job
Simply doing the best he can
It was this raw, beautiful moment
Of utter clarity
Is this how healthy people
Discuss problems openly?
And as if by magic I felt
All my hurt and anger dissipated
I wasn’t left with unheard emotions
Heavy on me like a weight
So much gratitude and love
That I was simply able to be
Recognition that forgiveness
Comes so much more easily
When you feel authentically heard
Validated and seen
It’s the most beautiful space
Behind the smokescreen