The Black Box.

I was looking through photos on an old phone and I came across this capture - one more evening in Hell with my lying husband.  A Friday night six years ago. I had felt shock, pain, grief. I couldn't see his wedding rings! And so I dared ask the question. His response, how could you doubt me?' was aimed like a dagger at my heart, my feelings, my love, aiming to make me feel uneasy, to doubt myself, said with a warning tone. And this was December - he was already 'giving her lifts home'... He wasn't wearing his wedding rings because he had already gone, just too scared of her husband to make the move a physical reality. Had to wait until May for the grand revelation. For some reason - oh yes, because he was scared of her husband - he had to make me think everything was all about our son, that nothing was wrong between us. So when the therapist said (several, many times) 'what makes you think that I...? '  Well now, where have I come across a similar sidestep...

  To read the post: https://open.substack.com/pub/3lack3ox/p/question-one? My Substack posts are more logical, better English versions, distillations of the contents of this blog. But to the question, is unconditional positive regard from your therapist all an act? My answer is, no. Or, yes - it could be. Therapy is a vocation for many therapists. And many therapists discover that therapy isn't about feeling rewarded by following their vocation. Others discover how to balance on a tightrope that stretches between hope and fear. And because they can do this, their clients likewise pick up the skill. Not being phased isn't an act. It comes from a genuine trust in oneself. The vocation only led you here. Now you better find out what it's all about! Going back to the subject, authenticity. Once the dreaded Kohuts were mentioned - read the post! I could not trust the therapist at all, well not as a therapist. He'd already blown his therapy credentials to bits by calling me a...

Deliquescence (Live) by SWANS GDPR is very much in my mind. Anyone who holds digital information about another person is a 'data controller' and as I write notes about my clients, I'm a data controller and so I have to have a policy, explaining how I will handle any requests for notes from clients on my website. Actually I've always had a policy of transparency, if a client wants their notes the protocol is that they sign to say that they accept responsibility for their information and that their therapist is no longer able to preserve the confidentiality of the notes.  Then they also have a choice, to go through the notes with me, or to simply have the notes. The ICO is very keen on confidentiality - the way notes are stored - and the law is very keen on clients being able to see their notes and correct any information about themselves that they don't want recorded. Should I make another, more assertive request to see my notes? Would The therapist regard this as mo...

As I left the house this morning, those were the words in my mind - I didn't run away . This is the kind of statement clients might make, and I will reflect such statements back with a hint of admiration in my voice. I know what it costs - to not run. Because of course there have been times when I did run,  for instance when the emergency services man was yelling at me to get out of the house. If I hadn't run then to distract my son, my husband could have lost a finger. My son was trying to bite it off.. I remember the aftermath, sitting on the ground, a dark and cold February night. My back to the garage, watching the police take my son away in handcuffs.  (What happened? +)  And there have been lots of things I've said that I should do, or will do, and then thought better of it! Not phoning the police when my son was extremely violent was one. I didn't know what was on the other side, would he be arrested, get a criminal record? But doing something different when it i...

It isn't just women.  I'm not even going to say that this happened to me, but if someone else told me that what had happened to me had happened to them... Ok, well we know that therapists will go to the police and claim that they are the victim of harassment - see Dangerous Memories (Tortoise Media / BBC Sounds), The shocking part is, the 'victim' only has to say that they told the client never to contact them again (twice ) for their complaint to be taken very seriously as harassment, and to have some evidence such as an email about or to the victim says that there is a problem with the victim. The communication doesn't need to contain a threat. The perpetrator doesn't have to have made a threat to hurt or harm. The victim's complaint is enough. Because a person experiencing harassment might be in such a bad psychological state, that they can't speak about it. And quite possibly, police, unlike therapists, don't feel comfortable with going into the ...

This morning, is the anniversary of discovering my husband’s infidelity, and two years after my final therapy session. So I’m thinking about how perpetrators want their victim to be silent - and the many ways they achieve this.  Did the therapist win?  Well, I didn’t make the formal complaint. Some of the reasoning about the risks people face, can be found here:   https://5tarry3kies.blogspot.com/2026/06/dont-speak-out.html In September last year the therapist tried to silence me by going to the police to say that I was harassing him. The harassment was my victim statement, also the physical recordings and transcripts of two therapy sessions. The therapist was no doubt fearful - but of what, the police didn’t uncover. I imagine it was of a formal complaint! He used the fact that I’d posted the transcripts plus flash-drive through his door, as evidence that I’d ‘gone to his home’ which has a certain vibe and implication. I’d posted them through his door because I wouldn’t ...

 I remember how my mom used to make jam-jelly from raspberries. She would boil hundreds (I was a child, it sure looked like thousands!) of raspberries in big saucepans. Then, the red hot glistening goodness was poured into a white triangle shaped bag suspended under a chair put onto the table. A range of empty jars waiting patiently, and one by one, under the dripping bag they would go. It seemed to take forever, and so much raspberry was lost; all the seeds, bits of leaf. Ok, writing feels like this! So much information and different 'voices', or rather, there are different ways to express each point. I could use academic language, or dive directly into metaphor rich description!  I think the warning is on the table in front of me. The book is Continuing Bonds. A colleague warned me, she hasn't been able to read it. But I didn't think it would defeat me, I like heavy books, I love heavy subjects. And as I began reading, I understood the problem. The book is written in ...

I like the sensation of being too sleepy to go to bed - it makes writing easier.  And writing is never easy! See, I've been putting things off, things being a non-descript term for writing. My reasoning is nonsensical, something about how I should be focusing on writing a business plan, and thinking about how I shift more towards specialising in conflict resolution, especially between clients and therapists, rather than keep that promise to myself. See, I made a promise not to keep quiet. To live up to that, for the sake of my integrity, I need to write about this experience, the full blooded, adult version, for print. I've read too many articles that further the illusion that therapists are almost Holy in their ability to rise above physicality of attraction. The last one I read maintained such an ideal version of events, I felt as if it had been written by the counsellor equivalent of a Stepford wife! In this version of something eerily similar to my story (!) this counsello...

Here I go again, someone has paid me attention - and I would love there to be more, but we have only met socially; we have intense conversations followed by a flurry of WhatsApp messages. There are some flickers of hope - my friends said 'oh...he likes you!'  But me?  Zero confidence in myself.  I'm a shattered wreck. I burn. I panic The therapist is still in my heart. I can't grieve for the therapist, there isn't enough reality to grasp, to understand even. If I think of him - like now - my eyes fill with tears. And I'm going to say it again! I got over the end of 25 years of marriage in about six months because everything was clear, I got closure. But this, this falling in love with a therapist who refused to talk honestly, simply reacted towards me as if I should have known better...this so called therapeutic approach to this so called erotic transference replicated the damaging behaviour my husband used.  Ambiguous language for a start, some of the phrases s...

Once upon a time psychotherapists truly believed that the task of grieving was a severing; they believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the faster we ignore any memories of our lost loved ones - the faster we will recover. The work of grieving was understood in terms of energy, that the energy we had invested in the beloved now flowed into the grave with them. And, the more we remembered, the more we felt the loss.  Put bluntly, in the older psychodynamic model - the dead provide us with no energy - and as our energy cannot be reciprocated by the dead, we should move on, let go, or risk depression.  I cannot for a second, agree with this! In the book, Continuing Bonds (1994) an example is given of psychotherapy at its most heart rending brutal worst. The concept that a refusal to let go of the loved one is a symptom of psychopathology justified a show of strength and resolution by a therapist as he metaphorically performed Chod, on a sixteen year old girl's mother...

I've been keeping an eye on the incoming complaints about therapists, to keep track and to learn what it is that most clients complain about. And the answer isn't predatory sex fiend therapists - a complaint male therapists most fear receiving! No, the most common reason for clients feeling traumatized by therapists is, sudden, inexplicable endings. Especially a sudden ending after a reassurance that therapy wont end without agreement! I'm guilty of doing this - twice - ending therapy without giving a transparent reason. Both situations were complicated by the rules of the agency I was working for/and/or my status as a student/and/or advice from a supervisor. I see therapy culture as the problem here. And I wonder how much of my therapist's catastrophic mishandling of 'my erotic transfer' was a direct effect of his training and his 'developmental issues'. He believed in 'developmental issues' so it is fair and reasonable to assume that they were ...

There is in many of us, obviously, a deep-seated desire to assent to extraterrestrial forces – to be embraced by them, overwhelmed by them, and if possible deprived by them of our own weary responsibility for ourselves. ​— ​“HICCUPS FROM OUTER SPACE”: RUSSELL DAVIES, REVIEWING CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, IN THE OBSERVER, MARCH 19, 1978 Vallee, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (p. 32).  Eros is deeply, deeply irrational, and traditionally understood as a yearning for the sublime. A chalice of wonder and bliss we can't ignore.  And so we seek the outer to ignite the inner... The quote from Russell Davies made me think. About the sublime. About Eros. About yearning. And I'd not considered how powerful people's yearnings for "The space brothers" a faith in salvation from above, can be - until I read Messengers of Deception . The space brothers, those benevolent and wise aliens, are a symbol. A yearning for wisdom rich, anomalous saviour...

Nigredo, or blackness, is the first stage of the alchemical magnum opus, representing putrefaction, decomposition, and the "dark night of the soul". I am not sitting on rocks looking out at the infinitely blue-black deep of Muxia. Instead, I watch waves of blackness roll through me. YouTube lets me know when he has posted. I don't follow him, but YouTube knows that I care and so...so even if I didn't want to know, I know and it is my habit to  'turn my ear to The Great Below'. It hurts. There is no remedy. No truth. No flux, no dissolution, no nigredo.  The subject of his video? Blackness. Dressed in black, black background. His lecture tears my heart wide open. We are so far apart that we meet. Enantiodromia - Jung, following Heraclitus, so named this phenomenon. In the philosophy of Heraclitus it [enantiodromia] is used to designate the play of opposites in the course of events—the view that everything that exists turns into its opposite. C.G. Jung (1949)...