Monday. five days after.

Shockwaves still wash through me.

I am so grateful to both the police and the duty solicitor, who together navigated a way for me to avoid the lethal - to my professional identity - floating mines, as I literally began to drown in the heavy darkness of the police station. One thing I'd taken to heart through the awful no sleep of Wednesday night, as I hysterically Googled, I learnt that one thing mattered more than anything else - having a solicitor present. Words cannot express my gratitude to the solicitor who metaphorically pulled me out of the churning, cold, midnight ocean. for the waters had already gone way over my head and I was drowning. Without the solicitor things would have been much worse.

Anyway, here I am. It is all OK (as far as I know - I'm still waiting for the lethal explosion). Today is a very different Monday to the worst version I was imagining as I sat, practically catatonic by the fire on Thursday, unable to eat, drink or speak, waiting until the time arrived to drive to the station.

But it is ok. Once more I sit in the library, my supermarket sandwiches, my laptop... everything is normal once again. 

Time to think, time to process, time to see what led to this.

Because I am at a crossroads. 

Asking myself, do I write this blog to record my exploration and just leave it it to be found? Or do I write to chart and share what happens when I fight back? 

Clearly the therapist doesn't see anything harmful about his version of therapy...

But I am reticent about making the official complaint. It would do to him what he has done to me - but less traumatic? My reason is based on judgment. I still don't trust myself! But I do not believe that he is a safe enough person to be a therapist. Worse, I think going to the police without warning me first was malicious. The psychotherapist did not say that he felt that he was being harassed. He had responded with cold, rigid words when I made a request for my notes in February 2024, he did not respond at all when I sent the recordings of our sessions January this year, or to my final email in September in which I explained how I'd felt betrayed, and described the depth of the psychological and emotional damage I'd experienced as a direct consequence of therapy with him. 

When the police asked me why I'd written to him, I told them the truth - I was complaining, not harassing. But ultimately allowing his narrative to stand prevented this going to court. He has money, I do not. And we would both have been in a world of paln.

My reasoning would never be given as much weight as the existence of emails. But surely the content of my emails would have been examined? The fact that I asked for resolution, that I asked for my notes; that I said I had reason to believe that I'd been harmed? His narrative, that I'd imagined a relationship between us, and harassed him because he said no and it all happened because I was in a vulnerable emotional state.... that isn't reflected in my communication with him.

Easy enough for me to agree with someone else's story. Easy enough to doubt myself, to save myself.

Ultimately my narrative tells of a psychotherapist who re-traumatized his client. I had reason to believe that he had flirted with me at the beginning of therapy, at the time I had many reasons to doubt myself! Any sane person is careful and aware of their capacity to make and own their mistakes  But I needed to know what had actually occurred. 

Yet in therapy, here was more gaslighting.

Consequently I was a mess...But, this is how gaslighting is. It makes you doubt everything. This is why it is so awful.

So why did the therapist make me doubt myself?

That is factor X... something running in him. Factor X is something a person can't face. And in TA terms, it can become a Hot Potato - see Fanita English's description.

Now all this about the Hot Potato is no more than conjecture on my part. But I was far too slow to see how dangerous my situation actually was. I have a hard time believing that this blooming Hot Potato thing could happen to me.

I digress!

The psychotherapist had experienced something when he was a student. It had had a profound effect - his voice was shaking as he told me - and when I inadvertently triggered this memory in him - The 'Brian Thorne' session - I became a prime candidate to accept the Hot Potato.

Sorry, I know this seems overly complicated, but it is the simplest explanation for why a person wouldn't assess the importance of self disclosure, when it has been requested by a person who had suffered gaslighting.

The aim of the Hot Potato is to pass all the guilt, fear and shame to someone else. Except of course, it can't work for ever. He will have to keep on doing it...He will do this to other clients.

And that's a real dilemma for me, because is just writing about what happened to me enough?