Retroflex

In Gestalt therapy, retroflexion is a disrupter - preventing you, me, them, from making 'contact' - and 'contact' is the whole person, full engagement with the all of 'it'. Doing the thing, asking for the thing, stepping forward and over the cliff!  

I'm well aware that the cliff metaphor has turned up before in this blog! But for this post, think of The Fool in the tarot. He is at the beginning - stepping over the cliff ...as a symbol of ignorance, and at the end, as a symbol of faith.

Anyway!

Retroflexion is a doing it all in your imagination and believing that it can't work, whilst mistaking thinking as the source of energy -  because thinking about it is exciting! Obviously there is a fine line between being a fool doing something that can't possibly work, as opposed to thinking things through and creating a sensible plan from real world knowledge. Retroflexion vs sensible plans. Well, plans are in progress. and I'm trying not to mistake retroflexing energy for the wild ride that is contact with the real by reminding myself of where I am and why.

So, in my real life (see Rings around the Moon) it would be foolish of me to give 9K to a university for a top-up degree. I wanted the opportunity to do research, and being associated with a university means that I would have access to the papers beyond those paywalls. Whatever! And tutors to support me. Yes, that would be amazing, but. I'm now 100% prejudiced against any therapist who tells me that they have a Masters, and I'm beginning to see the multiplicity of bizarre psychological theories as a thousand times more pathological, and pathologizing than retroflection!

Guess I'm a bit angry?

Back to the buts.

But, the roof in the living room leaks, the house needs so many repairs. This takes cash. And my son is frozen in retroflexion, unable to dare to make the leap, unable to trust himself to spend money to get the supplies he needs to float a business he knows wont work.

Yup, that's a problem. 

His retroflecting means that he talks to me, a lot, mostly about how his dad has taken all the family money and let him down. He has a point! But if I was sitting at the keyboard for any length of time, writing my assignments he would sit beside me and keep talking...deja vu.

For him to make contact, to stop retroflecting I'm willing to throw more money at that problem too. So, no to university.

The black box demands action, and my plans are getting written. Hooray for David Allen, the blessed brethren and sisters of the PKM world! 

THANK YOU!

It's quite exciting really! My six years as a counsellor have given me insight into exactly how FUBAR conflict resolution is in the 'real world'. So, I can't ignore this. The first thing I did after my final session, of FUGAZI therapy was to see Tool and to sign up to a course on conflict resolution. This was good, very good, and kept me alive? Thereafter, I witnessed what happened to friends, clients, myself, and my son when conflict occurs and I began to understand how power opperates. The second time I saw Tool, marked the day I qualified as a mediator, and began working for a charity where I could fulfil the promise I'd made at the inquest that set everything in motion. 

Almost three years later I've done as much as I can do there, learnt a lot about how mental health services don't work, and I'm getting out slowly. Because it is now time to set in motion the tasks deciphering the black box has suggested. Beginning with writing to as many supervisors as possible, explaining the benefit of getting a dual qualified, counsellor-mediator involved when there is a dispute between therapist and client. 

 People are scared of victims, this is why the therapist went to the police. 

Jeffrie Murphy argues that the crime victim’s resentment and indignation are in fact valid feelings that deserve social recognition and respect. He recognizes that this passion can be excessive, but then, he argues, what passion cannot? Rather than ceding to common prejudices and fears about victims, a truly fair system needs to find a better way of including them in the workings of justice. Herman, Judith. Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (pp. 47-48). 

At the moment I'm mostly looking at the role of the bystander, in conflict. In my experience of sexual assault (me) the cold, or paralysed by fear, or whatever non-response of witnesses was the hardest, is still the hardest. part of what happened to me, to integrate.

“Victims of crime whose suffering is regarded as solely their private misfortune are likely to feel isolated and, indeed, disrespected by the moral community. Only when a victim’s resentment and demand for justice are shared by the group can the victim feel restored to full membership in the moral community.” Ross London. Crime, punishment and restorative justice.

I felt totally and completely ashamed of myself for falling in love with my therapist. I still do at times. That the police took him seriously (until they met me and read my words) was coruscating, humiliating and shaming. If I hadn't written this blog, if I hadn't read so many books about trauma, it could have sent me back into a suicidal state. The police were, to their credit, aware of this. But, nevertheless, a bit more understanding about the therapist's failure would have been better, before I was called into the police station!

I've said enough about how badly the therapist dealt with it, and I've probably mentioned some of the times when it was met with with kindness, and concern for me by therapist freinds (I wouldn't tell non-therapist freinds!) But this positive response isn't always so One friend ghosted me when I dared to tell him about this (by WhatsApp). I've seen him since, quite a few times at gatherings of mutual friends. We zoom less. He never mentions it. I never message him. We talk, we get on well - but. We are no longer close. So shame, certainly, I have plenty and I cannot talk to him about how his silence replicated the therapist's, my husband's...non engagement, and victim blaming. 

The 'moral community' cannot be relied upon it seems...

"The idea of a moral community resonates in particular with the testimony of survivors. I would use the term broadly, as a community to which the individual belongs and which she trusts to come to her aid when she is hurt. When this does not happen, a victim of a violent crime feels abandoned by her community, and her trust and sense of belonging are deeply violated. The victim feels isolated and cast out. Too often, the result is a profound sense of dishonor, a disgraced identity. In her victim impact statement, writer Chanel Miller, one of the rare sexual assault victims who dared to report the crime and undergo the full rigors of a public trial, wrote to the judge, “In newspapers my name was ‘unconscious intoxicated woman,’ ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while I believed that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that . . . I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster . . . I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt." Herman, Judith. Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (p. 50)