The Black Box.

Well this is so strange.  And I'm going to interpret and play. Ten minuites ago I saw a photograph of the therapist.  A new photo, a recent photo.  And, the shock!  I laughed. A lot. What happened? A Gregor Samsa metamorphosis must have over come him. He wakes each morning to find that he has become someone else.  The mirror reflects the truth; that his spirit, his soul has been poured into a physical container that looks exactly like a psychotherapist he has repeatedly expressed a loathing for. And this change has grown over time, it was slow, and not over night. Unlike poor Gregor! And this change could have been stopped. Instead he has allowed it, fed it, groomed it! Enabling him to enact  'I don't like the person I see in the mirror'... Or that person and I we are the same... He looks, exactly, EXACTLY like a psychotherapist who he had described as a thug; as a person who provokes arguments, a person with a 'heart of granite'. Oh, interpretation is too...

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 ...

Time to look at the compass and consult the map. I've asked my formidably impressive boss to write a reference so that I can apply to university - because I need to get into research.  My feeling is that no one is going to listen to me until I spend enough money gain more qualifications. Probably because of how rubbished I felt by the therapist. I remember saying this as I left his room the last time. The man had made out that his two years of studying the theory of therapy (only two years!) was somehow better than the five years I and my 'sisters' took. We had literally completed years more practice sessions, feedback, and case studies than him.  Despite my 'lack of education' I can categorically say that therapy isn't supposed to leave a client-student feeling that they wont be qualified 'enough' after completing and passing a BACP approved course. My insecurity is a part of the pathology left over from my sessions with him. And I obviously believe hi...

February is a bad month. It was in a February that I sent the therapist a heads-up that I was thinking of requesting my notes. It was a February when he called me a minx. And just before February last year I was shifting towards making a formal complaint against him, hoping against hope for a sensible resolution before I metaphorically let out the dogs... This February feels like it is going to be tough. But no longer is this to do with the therapist. I had a long drive to the border land between England and Wales to meet up with friends. But almost there a warning light lit up with an unwelcome ping! It was raining, it was cold. I stopped the car and felt the aloneness and vulnerability of being a woman who has 'lost' her husband. I felt all the fear I carry all the time, no longer drowned out by whatever clients, whatever CPD, whatever...it is the fear I feel in the evening when I catch a bus home. But not in the car; my car is my safe place! This sudden need brought back mem...

I've updated the blog posts of my therapy sessions. Beginning in 2021. Feeling like the box has been opened up as much as it is possible for me to do without publishing the original recordings and transcripts - all have served their purpose and have been deleted. The session accounts derived from them are pretty accurate... I was going to delay the posting of the updated versions - but I don't know, felt like I needed to put it all down, here and now. So, in this picture kindly drawn for me by Chat GPT, we have Freud, Jung, Fritz Perls and Carl Rogers - the funny thing is, I asked for Ellis to be included - as he is always forgotten.  Even by Chat GPT! Mesmerized by the brilliance of their theories, each of the four, in his own sweet way, wished to do good. Each one was temporarily blinded by the power of his  enlightening ideas.  And each of them went completely mad sometimes , and liable to act in ways deemed even then, completely unethical. Except dear old Carl Rogers...

Victim blaming is alive and well in the therapy room. Not just in the defensive labels thrown about by therapists who have been accused of misconduct. And I must admit  I'm feeling kind of washed up at the moment. I've not made any progress towards my goal of changing the world for the better (!) and meanwhile, I come across more victim blaming motifs, this time as I skim through the blurb describing courses offered for therapists. It is depressing. But I think there is a smattering of anger? Enough to make me write this! I'm trying hard to feel some moral indignation - but instead I'm just thinking of all the time I've wasted and how busy my weeks ahead are, and is my car booked in for an MOT? I love therapy, but do we do any good? And no, we therapists don't mean to victim blame.  You know, I have only seen the first episode of Pluribus , but sometimes I see similarities!  OK, it begins like this - I'm reading from a course for therapists who want to kno...

The study also revealed an intriguing pattern: people with aphantasia showed a disconnect between their physiological fear responses and their subjective experience of fear. Their bodies reacted with fear, but they didn't feel as afraid.Dr. Monzel suggests this might be related to alexithymia - difficulty identifying and describing emotions - which appears to be more common in people with aphantasia. This "decoupling" between physical and emotional responses has been observed in alexithymic individuals before. The more I think about the dialogues between the therapist and I, the more puzzled I become. I don't 'do' diagnosis, and I tend to see labels as very likely to concretise and limit identity. The problem in therapy was that my thinking includes metaphors to describe sensations, emotions, experiences, and I've learnt to rely on Gendlin's focusing to understand the felt sense of any issues, both for myself and with clients. It works well for som...

I'm still looking for and researching the other side - the client's experience when making an official complaint. As I read, I encounter a mix of sadness and anger. And something else rises to the top, I feel guilt?  I'm not taking action, I'm not designing or doing anything except absorbing the impact. But sure it is true, research is important...if I write a plan, make a kanban , be kind to myself, trust myself. It's ok. I don't feel ok. I'm sitting very uncomfortable by the fire, on the floor. The room grows darker. Exactly as it was just before I went to the police station. I feel the same heaviness, but also now, a kind of triumph.. It really helps knowing that I'm not alone, that therapists often throw clients under the bus . We (I'm a therapist ) have the language and tone of voice to do it. We can provide the compelling explanation that will render your account void. And where is your evidence? I'm reminded that I began recording my sessi...

Actually 2026 has arrived with a sense of dread. But that's another story! Every year I write a letter to myself as the year ends. And so, this morning I got to read last year's letter to me now. I sat down with good coffee and cake, and started to read. Clearly this time last year I was stuck in the pain 'therapy' brought me - and I was on my way to making the complaint official, despite all my misgivings about the complaint process. Because I felt so uneasy about making an official complaint, and so that the therapist could understand what had occurred to make therapy so profoundly damaging I sent him the recordings of the sessions with my annotated transcripts . And because he didn't reply, or offer any acknowledgement of a problem I felt that there was simply no other option left except to send him my victim statement . I didn't want to see myself as a victim - but there wasn't any other way now to view it. Only by deeply acknowledging what had happened ...

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, ...

Clearly I've wanted to ( run away ) I guess that I'm at the tail end of the storm. Everything I've wanted to run from, and still want to run away from is seeped in aversion - but I don't run.  Period.  Never have, never will. This looks like an effect of threat, or rather how, when threat is paused or over, the cat is bored and the mouse that looked dead gets up and runs! Did I ever expect that I would buy some running shoes and download  From coach to 5 K ? It feels a lot like burn-out , but that was a blank, horrid state, I used to imagine walking into the sea, and the music of those times was Strange Day ... I was working at the Accident hospital  nothing stressful there! Anyway, the symptom this time isn't shoes or The Cure . Instead it is   compelling explanations ! Interesting how compelling they feel. To be fair to myself, it isn't random aversions. The thing about data collection  bothers me. The questions I have to ask charity funded clients are q...

Well...finally managed to tell a friend about the 'interview under caution' event. So the power of it is dissipating, thank goodness. Also I no longer care if it will show up on an enhanced DBS or not. I will simply tell my story. The more I think about the part when I was leaving the police station the more I believe that the solicitor and the police were trying to tell me that they would be happy to take this further if I wished to make a counterclaim...But I was in too much shock to take that in properly, I just wanted to get out. So is it all said and done? This blog was over after I posted my 'victim statement' because I'd said it all. I thought I'd drop in here now and again if I decided to make a complaint to UKCP about the therapist, just to keep you updated. Think I'm off home now, back to Rings Around The Moon. See next post.. . All that is left to do is set the transcripts to be published here in 2064!

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...

To hear Susie Jamieson 's account of what it is like to have a complaint made against a counsellor, please follow the link to Josephine Hughes ' podcast:  [LINK].   It is clear from Susie's account that the way complaints are dealt with can cause emotional, psychological and financial devastation to therapists . This isn't what I wanted or needed to happen to the therapist. The harm he caused could never be made any better by setting in motion a procedure that causes more harm. On the other hand, the laws around harassment state that if a person has been asked to stop all communication and they don't - they risk committing an offence. This leaves a complainant with no option other than making an official complaint...or silencing themselves. There is no way now to repair the relationship and leave it as something as iconic and relatively pointless as Stonehenge, a noble monument - it will instead be a smoking ruin in the heart of dystopia, breeding zombies and monst...

I'm listening to File on Four , ( read here ) a  BBC investigation into bad therapy ...I'm feeling hurt, frustrated, blocked.  Mostly I feel about what happened to me, as if I'm returning to a bowl of sick. Sorry...horrid image. I can't let this feeling win.. Labour MP, Geraint Davies has proposed a new law which would outlaw people calling themselves psychotherapist or counsellor without the proper training. He also wants them directly regulated by Government, much like a doctor or a dentist.  I know this sounds as if it would solve the problem, but the therapist was registered, he had a Masters in psychotherapy , and he is a member of the most prestigious of the ethical bodies, UKCP . But when I wrote to UKCP seeking advice - because I was reticent about starting a formal complaint process as it would have done to him what he did to me -  the reply from UKCP seemed to have come from an AI . The reader had ignored my meaning, and simply scanned the email f...

 [+Music - Flood by Tool] I feel as if my lungs are still coated inside with river silt and the occasional dead fish and old boot. Focusing more on not coughing than anything anyone said to me these last two days...not good.  But I have survived the flood . [+Music - Undertow by Tool] And I'm going to have to write the letter, the handing in my notice letter to the charity I work for . This could be a reaction to the last few weeks? But I am feeling increasingly compromised as a solution focused therapist .  We are good with working with people who are sent to therapy, I ask ' so what would the person who sent you here hope to see different about you'? and yes we may well negotiate the appearance of compliance. This improves a person's experiences enough for them to start making plans for themselves! But I have zero comprehension as to why young people "who may have ASD " are sent to me. Or rather, why is no one taking seriously the effect of long term - yea...

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...

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 ...