Bad therapy - the past.
As my eyes fill with tears...
Listening to the track that is my song of the month.[+]
Thinking, what is it about the story of this tragic therapy with Kit that matters so much?
So much that I have to find a way through this.
In other words, where does the energy for all these words come from? The pain in my heart from the unknowing, the lack of clarity or resolution with Kit is one thing.
My 'problem' with the conduct of some therapists is another.
It is time for me to think clearly about my own Factor Xs.
Factor 1. 'Mrs Stable'.
My first marriage was to a gentle and kind man. But his shame, secrecy, out of control spending, and OCD behaviour were too much for me. We had two small children, and his credit card repayment each month was more than the mortgage. I said that we needed therapy.
What resulted was terrible therapy - from a highly qualified psychotherapist. I'm not sure now that is the case - but esteemed yes, and in private practice.
My husband would only agree to see her because she was a friend of the family member who had abused him as a child...read that twice. For me, this still doesn't make any sense.
Perhaps he imagined that if I did tell her, that she wouldn't believe me?
But then, the real problem, according to him was me - and he agreed to therapy for my sake. Whilst I hoped that he'd tell her what had happened to him, and how it was affecting us! For sure at that point there was a Factor X. I was in play-back, and he'd dismissed it, told me that he had been abused and you just get over it (by developing OCD and having to spend all your money on the same items over and over?!)
When I met the therapist, at the first mention of 'risk of harm to others, especially a child' and having to take action, in the opening 'contract' my mouth was firmly sealed shut.
If I spoke I'd ruin the family member's career - the person who had abused my husband when he was a child - and my husband would feel that his trust in me was violated. This would also put me in danger.
Nor could I tell the therapist how it had been to be in the car with him when I believed he might just drive into oncoming traffic at any moment...
Truth was just too dangerous.
I couldn't trust that any help the therapist might want to get us wouldn't tip him over the edge..
Instead I managed to smile and go along with the charade as my husband told Mrs Stable about our lovely weekend away - the weekend which began with him threatening to kill himself and our daughters unless I got in the car with him.
Just for a second, can you imagine being in that situation? Then having to sit quietly while he tells the therapist how nice it was being away together.
There was zero room for error- just one word wrong...I had to keep calm.
Though I'd got through this, and had a slow and gentle way to get out and through and to keep everyone safe, Mrs Stable inadvertently almost destroyed my ability to function.
During the couples sessions I'd sat back and let my husband's version of events unfold. And I've no idea really why she accepted what he said! He was upset that I'd been upset, and he thought that I was out of order and trying to make him feel not good enough? But I'd told him that it was rape. His argument was that it wasn't rape because there was no violence. And I wasn't able to justify my interpretation during the session. I had to be so careful about his state of mind! Nor would I dare to be honest in individual sessions. The contract destroyed any chance of that.
When I spoke of my distress, he said I was exaggerating. I could not agree, I couldn't' argue.
And then during an individual session with my husband, Mrs Stable told him that I was potentially a threat to myself and the children.
Without any evidence.
Based on my husband's interpretation of my state of mind. He used an incident of stalking to justify this.
A man followed me home from the supermarket. And my husband wanted to believe that I'd wanted this!
The man from the supermarket parked on the drive behind me. As I carried my children into the house he walked into the house and closed the door. I kept calm, I was extremely boring. I planned for the worst possibility, how I would have to offer him a hot drink and throw boiling water at him, grab my children and get out.
My mind was racing and I was petrified.
In the end the man just made a whole lot of unpleasant remarks about me and left.
And my husband?
Blamed me, said I must have wanted that to happen. I must have invited him in...
In his eyes I was a danger to myself, to others. Something about the possibility of predatory behaviour, of men as threatening and dangerous couldn't be accepted by him.
The therapist's acceptance of his view was devastating for me.
I just remember that one evening we were driving back from the therapy session and he said that she, the therapist had told him not to tell me this but... she was worried that I could be a danger to myself or the children
As he told me I felt that he was happy, probably feeling validated. At that moment he had found a way to pass me his own personal, hot potato.
He had actually threatened to kill.. but I hadn't told her. He'd passed as calm, rational, stable. I was a rape victim living with my abuser.
But I hadn't told her..
When he told me what she said, I broke down.
Back home I locked myself in the bathroom and phoned my friends, and the parents of my friends to ask them if this was true, was I dangerous did they see me this way?
I was distraught.
I couldn't trust myself.
She had echoed his interpretation, and agreed with him. Certainly, I can understand doing this as part of the process of talking during therapy, but only as a stage, and never as any kind of concrete diagnosis!
In my final session with her she told me that she had done it with the intention of him telling me. She said that she had intended it to shock me! She said that she had realised that she might have made a mistake - explaining that she had intended it as a 'wake up call' so I'd stop trying to destroy our marriage.
I was speechless.
During a couples session she had described me as being like a child in a meadow picking flowers, always seeing a better one further away.
She formed this notion based on the fact that I'd stencilled flowers around the hall without asking my husband if he would like that. He had said 'this as what's she's like '. Describing me as getting carried away in the moment. They also analysed my journal, my husband had found it hidden behind the water heater...he brought it in as evidence.
Her apology really wasn't enough...
We had come to therapy as his last chance to consider his depths of self hatred and misery the abuse had caused, and to make changes - if he was going to have any kind of relationship with me...
I think he was truly blind to the impact of siding with his abuser, saying it was nothing, whilst at the same time it had undermined his trust in himself and his very identity. It made him blind to the validity of my distress, because he was blind to his own.
And certainly this is a tragedy, I bear him no ill will.
But, I don't see any way to forgive one more highly educated, prestigious and knowledgeable therapist - who didn't take the time to question his narrative, and my absence.
Both my husband and the abusive family member were fine upstanding men with selfless jobs, in respected positions of care and authority.
So why would anyone believe me?
I knew that the facts were too dangerous, and that I'd be positioned as certifiable if I described how things really were.
Basically I have a pretty good grasp on reality. I think I made the only choice that would guarantee safety for my children.
Fathers kill their children to cause maximum suffering to the mother. He'd threatened to do this. And the game of therapy was rigged.
How could the therapist be objective?
How could I get though?
I had to choose a very left field solution, enacting religious mania... but that's a story for another day.
Coincidentally my second husband knew of this and I suspect that once he'd hit my son, he was aware that our marriage was over. After what I'd endured in my first marriage, I'd told him right from the beginning that never again would I tolerate any threat of harm to myself and my children.
And again I learnt how difficult it is to do this, how impossible it is to speak out and know that it will help.
The impact of my son's psychosis - left us both shattered and raw from the unending distress and violence my son's state of mind brought. Add to that the unremitting pressure (bullying) of the mental health team.
They were responsible for making our lives worse.
I understand that my husband's sense of responsibility to his family, and to me had to be severed because he couldn't believe I'd forgive him after he'd hit our son...
But the shocking thing is, I did forgive - at first.
But I will never forgive what came after....
A few years back I tried to find Mrs Stable - not her real name just incase you are wondering! I wished to tell her the whole story...but I have no idea where she is, I expect she is a long since retired, and probably she was a psychologist and not a therapist.
Who knows!
This brings me back to the phenomenon of the hot potato:
Fanita English - It was in 1967-1968, in the course of my practice in Chicago, that I became aware of what I called the hot potato phenomenon. Specifically, in relationships that are primarily based on Parent/Child complementary transactions (be they chronological parent/child, or teacher/pupil, therapist/patient, or husband/wife), it is possible for the controlling figure (whom I call the donor) to transmit to the other (whom I call the vulnerable recipient) a sense that he or she must enact behavior that actually pertains to the donor’s pathology. Thereby the donor feels “magically” liberated from an inner compulsion to enact the particular behavior which has been transmitted to the vulnerable recipient. The process of transmission operates subtly, on a well-nigh unconscious level. It is akin to persistent malevolent hypnotism that takes advantage of whatever transference feelings are developed in the vulnerable recipient as a result of real or imagined dependency on the donor. [+]
My response to being told that 'I was a risk' was to lock myself away from the family - in case I really was the danger- and to ask others for their opinion. I knew that it was untrue - but how he had said it, and with the authority of a psychotherapist, meant that I had to take it seriously.
This was from a man who didn't recognise rape, and had threatened to kill his children. The therapist'strategy meant that he had a way to pass his fear of himself, his shame, on to me.
He succeeded.
And the damage cannot ever mend completely.
I think the power of my shame has three components, the first is the introjected narrative from the world 'why would you marry someone capable of that '! The second is an absence of personal power, I had agreed to marry him, so I felt responsible. I felt powerless to contradict any narrative, or to question reality. The third part is that I needed to maintain some power and control over the situation. If I spoke the truth there was no safety net, and no guarantee about what might happen next..
Afterwards comes self attack...and it is for this that therapy is important.
If you now find yourself wondering if my first husband is why I entered willingly into the role of a submissive in a BDSM scene, the answer is yes. I needed a safe encounter with a domineering and threatening power dynamic. Going to fear, getting through it is important. It was how I managed to recontextualise and to understand my relationship with power.
Factor X. Part 2: Tsultrim.
A long story...which I will condense into; he was, still is someone with zero tolerance for human vulnerability. The Factor X in the Tsultrim story is that we were described as Abelard and Heloise for all sorts of reasons, not least that our relationship was mostly made of letters, intense discussion on philosophical points, until he was 'sealed into retreat!'A Factor X is an unconscious response to an event in the present that has a similarity, a resonance with the past.
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