Application in progress...

The application for university has been sent, so I wait.

Meanwhile here I am again in the library thinking things through.

Rather like criticising the theories that underpin why mental health services failed our family, criticising the theories that underpin how the therapist re-traumatized me is simple. What happened isn't difficult to understand. And I think that this signifies a deeper problem. The obvious answers don't work. Theories are only theories, and the people who made up the mental health team, and the therapist, did not set out to cause harm, quite the opposite!

This leaves a more complicated idea to be thought about. Is it bad practice when a good therapist uses bad theories, or is bad practice something else?

I'm clear in my own mind that someone who chooses to apply a theory that isn't working, needs to be clear on what working looks like, and reassess their theory.  For example, remembering how terrible it was to feel absolutely unloved and unlovable might change a person's mind about transferring those feelings onto others.

I don't diagnose. But I do...I don't say that this was part of the therapist's process, but I am saying it was. My problem is that I cannot know, and knowing would cause me see him as ignorant. Perhaps that would help me?  The alternative is to blame theory. Perhaps he didn't have a good enough framework to help him understand his past? 

I'm defining understanding as a process of matching one's experience with the structure of the theory, and experiencing a sensation of sudden clarity and the conviction that this theory explains everything.

The feeling theory matching reality isn't always a confirmation. Nor is an explanation always a correct understanding. It is something, but what! That's a important question!The click of an image or idea fitting a feeling occurs during focusing.  The images, or mini narrative that encapsulate the wordless are never the explanation. They are simply a way to contact feelings beyond the rational and obvious.

So in one focusing session just after my husband had left and I thought that he might come back - and I still wanted and needed that to happen, the pain of it - when I used focusing - gave me an image of myself shut out of a hotel. About eighteen stories high. On a ledge, trying to get my husband's attention ( inside the room) to let me in. And as I looked at this image, I asked myself why this image. What was it about my feelings that made me think of this? Slowly I realised that he was the one who had pushed me out of the window...

Metaphorically this was true. 

Rationally and obviously this was untrue.

So there are different kinds of truth existing at the same time. Focusing told me how I felt beyond the sadness, it allowed me to see that he was dangerous and contact with the image changed how I felt. I stopped needing him to help me. I realised that I had to be really careful and possibly deceptive if I was going to survive this.

So the feeling of understanding oneself in the light of a theory is simply a kind of halfway through the focusing technique - probably!

By the way, this is all pure conjecture on my part...

But I will continue. 

Experience is prime. Theory is only a way to understand. Theory is not understanding - I understood my past in the light of attachment theory and I had thought of attachment theory as a reasonable explanation. But this understanding offered zero protection against the 'disorganized' panic / relief cycle caused by gaslighting. I think now most people understand that anyone can be reduced to a clinging, crying wreck when someone they love is being both kind and murderous.

It helps to know that people do this to others when it fits their needs for you to appear to be 'mad'. I also suspect that linking the process to the term gaslighting, obscures the reality, I don't think that the perpetrator always recognises what they are doing.

Self disclosure, honesty is the only remedy. But, you can't get that when someone is gaslighting!

My husband couldn't be truthful because I could have made decisions that he didn't want to hear or see. He felt powerless, and used threat because he wasn't powerless. Yes, this is complicated! I assume it was exactly the same process going on in the therapist's mind.

Who knows!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Behind the mirror.

Image
A Bell Sings In Your Head by The Shining Tongues Almost the Solstice . Imagine the force of the sun, like a bow wave of life drawn deeper into the earth. The sun, so weak, now unable to rise high enough to give us a day. Yet this descent rejuvenates the earth and in return some force from the earth empowers the sun. Imbolc is the first real sign in the quality of light that darkness is receding - a cold and righteous sea, hissing like a nest of snakes, pulled by the moon to the outer shore. Soon the light will return and the days frosted in silver gain a cold clarity.  But for now, there is a mixing, a cross-pollinating, it is the solstice. Winter Solstice memories include knowing without a shadow of a doubt that my husband had begun 'sleeping' with her. So called 'flashbulb' memories; his body language, the taste of treachery. The feeling as of a blade entering my heart, and, how each time I asked for truth I was lied to.  Still bleeding psychically from this wound, ...
Read more

The 'something'.

The something took place on Wednesday. I drove to the most godawful town I've ever had the misfortune to visit. And it was obvious that no one should stop there. Zero street parking. A car park with no visible entrance was my first problem, almost as if you had to be someone who knows the secret door, no strangers allowed. I mean, Innsmouth . I should have taken the bus to get the full effect! With minutes to spare before the dreaded s omething , I found a parking bay and fed the machine some coins.  No way to pay by card.  The air was so cold, I was seeing snow.  I never, ever want to be there ever again as long as I live! I've seen this in others, the people sent to see me who take counselling as the final insult. My heart breaks for them. And now I know exactly how they feel. And the godawful town, made me think of a colleague whose misfortune it was to work here, how she was offered all sorts of interesting opportunities when she accepted the job. But the job tu...
Read more

Intermission.

Image
I'm still ill. Almost phoned for an ambulance yesterday. That bad, difficulty breathing in. But, got through. So, here I am. Morning routine. Three rounds of Wim Hof , following a brief panic about the wording of my insurance. Realised again that interviewed under caution isn't the same as being under caution. But I need this in writing. Verbal wasn't enough to stick in my cautious mind. So, Wim Hof, then good coffee - which I can't taste due to my COVID like, non COVID. Sitting outside, soaking up the blue of the sky, the good green around me. Listening to: Lemanis by Spaceslug Next comes the cold shower of course. Breakfast... Then I'm as done as I can be.  And today? All clients cancelled because I can't talk, only cough. Many thoughts. What to do with today, how to navigate a safe encounter with the hurt and rage that bubbles under fear and compassion. I heard someone talking to Huberman about idiot compassion ...my understanding came from Trungpa ...
Read more