Face down...

On the evening before Halloween I found myself within the backrooms. The summons had arrived by post, and after a night of panic filled with frantic Googling, no sleep. And a day of dissociated numbness and despair - I drove to the location in a godforsaken town, and parked my car, hardly expecting it to still be there should I ever return. I felt as if I’d been asked to attend my own execution.

The building loomed before me, a stone ship adrift on a concrete sea. I entered and spoke to someone behind a wall of glass. The waiting had begun. The message was passed on and I sat down on a bench - listening to muffled sounds,  feeling the cold air around my legs as if I was in a river of ghosts and I was beginning to go into shock, the endorphin opiate state of dissociation. I was the antelope who had walked into the lion’s den going down under tooth and claw without fighting, terror without sensation. All hope, gone.

Opening my eyes I noticed that my captor-not-captor had an envelope, more than one. I wondered if she had the recordings? Had she read my letters? And what had I said? “That I have reason to believe that you could cause harm to other clients” A request for “Coffee fuelled discussions”? I’d said that it was love. And everything I’d said was true. My captors had made it clear that I could leave if I chose, but this would go against me. It felt like a game. I answered honestly that I didn’t feel suicidal now, but I had - and that is why I’d written the letters. No game, but I was playing too, because this was deadly serious, and I needed them to see that I was not OK.

And then  I followed them up stairs, walking through darkened passageways and through doors that would open only with passwords and keys. Finally we entered a room. Sounds here were distant and under years of dust and cold sweat, there were no windows, I felt as cut off and beyond reach as if I was under the sea. The only illumination came from three Art Deco panels on the doorless walls, which spilled lemon grey light into a dim room; cyanosed and hazy. A room designed to make people feel small. Inside there were just three over-sized chairs. I sat down, the chair was soft and spongy. The solicitor followed, just a blur of darkness, a shadow in this dire place. But his words were to create the thread that I must follow, if I was ever to get out. He described me as a victim, and I tried not to contradict, and he explained that if I would agree with all that was said he could negotiate a way for me to leave this place. Time had vanished, I felt sick and beaten, no sleep, no food, I’d willingly entered the ghost realm. Now I would believe and say anything to escape it. 

And so he left the room. And I tried to hold tight, commit to memory the things I must not say; there were forbidden words, phrases, meanings to avoid. I was caught in a web of ritual; reason and truth melting and flowing to fit the shape of the key the solicitor offered me, my only way out. In the room I was aware of layers of reality, how the top level was a thin veneer of calm. And below this spongy surface I could sense razor blade questions designed to elicit the information the therapist alleged, that would confirm his view. And if I said the wrong thing I would not feel the severing blade, only the warm gush, and my drowning.

The solicitor returned with good news. They had no doubt read my letters. The solicitor had explained to me the presence of the trap, and I just about had enough sense to hold this foremost in my mind as I followed him into another room. Again the same hazy light, but also a video camera to catch my words, my face, my body’s movements, to make me into another ghost - one more to be stored with the others.

The direct threat of my situation made my mind spin, and I do not know what I said. I know that I felt as if I was fighting for my life. I know that I did not look at the solicitor, his advice was loud and clear in my mind, and to look at him might cause them to think I was simply saying what he had told me to say. He had explained the trap to me, and at a certain point I saw that the therapist had used a green marker to highlight a sentence in my letter - the one I’d sent when I’d posted the recordings of the two sessions through the therapist’s door as evidence to him of how and why I had been rendered suicidal by his ‘therapy’. It wasn’t a threat, it wasn’t harassment, I had and have serious concerns about his practice. I should have reported him, end of. But he, like other therapists who cry harassment rather than address the concerns of the complainants, was trying to metaphorically ‘kill me’ before I ‘killed him’! Except I would not want to put anyone through what I was now experiencing.

And so  I stepped into and out of the trap, because the trap had to be reframed. I could not deny it. I explained that it related to my request for my notes, that I couldn’t ignore his behaviour…that he’d called me a minx…that he had retraumatized me by refusing to be honest about his feelings, and that I’d had just cause to be concerned and not to ignore what had happened. I explained that he had an ethical duty to seek resolution when therapy has not gone well. I also explained that all the recordings had been deleted, unless he’d broken my confidentiality by giving the recordings to them. I ended with the truth, I told them that the final episode had played out and that this story is 100% mine. And that this, here and now is the ultimate demonstration of why this person should not be a therapist.

And then it was over, and everything became a hazy blur again. I don’t remember what was said, only the impression that the police had understood and stopped playing games with me. The green highlighted sentence was enough to take me down, I’m sure of it. And I’d slipstreamed through, only because the other things I’d said about having a duty not to ignore behaviour that could harm others, resonated in this place…And that is all I remember except feeling that they were on my side and trying to tell me that, but it wouldn’t go in because all I wanted, all I needed was to get home and sleep.

So the song for this is Filter, Face Down. I've added it before - it says it all better than I can.