The Black Box.

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 ...

Over on substack... Over on Substack I realised that it isn't going to happen.  I dare not send the complaint. So I'm posting here the most part of what I was going to send...a lot missed out. No mention of him talking about the other client who wouldn't #1 'accept love'. Nothing about the references to #2 'coffee fuelled discussions..' So this begs the question, how can a victim complain safely? The usual answer is money...which I don't have. So, in time honoured fashion, if a victim doesn't feel safe in making an official complaint - though I want to hide away, the story has to be told. Back to good old, freeware...(CC) 3. What do you feel was wrong with the therapy/therapist? That the therapist needed to have been aware that by responding to me in a defensive and avoidant way he was repeating the erosive dynamic that had originally proved so harmful to me, and was the reason why I was in therapy. That the therapist had a defensive attitude when I ...

Closed...I've been thinking about what that actually means ever since writing it 20 days ago. My feelings are not resolved on any level, but on the other hand - I have a comprehensive 'crash report' and clarity on what not to do as a therapist when clients make complaints.  And I now have the information that I need to make the formal complaint. Thinking about writing that complaint, and even downloading the form again after saying so many times, that I wouldn't do this; because what good would it do?  Well Things have changed.  The black box has been deciphered. And the complaint isn't so much about him anymore, it should be made because clients rightly fear being disempowered and belittled by therapists. The way to resolve such disputes is up to me to bring forward, and to that end I'm reducing my hours working for a charity, but keeping my private practice,  and I'm going to have to learn something about marketing... OK, so the therapist's choice - go...

Why don't clients speak up when therapy feels off, or when they find themselves feeling hollowed out, almost crippled by the effect of therapy, as they leave the room? I've thought a lot about this. I remember leaving a session with a different therapist, and my brain had been frazzled. I'd been talking about something that involved the outside world - I think I have written about it in this blog? About how my friend was groomed, literally groomed and about to be abused by her teacher when we were teenagers. She phoned me and I got her out...And how my friend didn't want anyone to know...and how for years, decades I kept my promise to her never to tell. And all the time I presume, he continued to 'work with troubled girls'.  I put the feelings of my friend above the abuse other girls probably suffered.  This is awful.  Speaking about it in therapy left me feeling like a cooked lettuce leaf. I didn't feel strengthened by the person centred approach. And I cou...

Perhaps I'm in a tearing everything down mood. After my week off from navigating the complexity of what the NHS thinks therapy should be, the complexity of what parents want therapy to do for their child, and the child sat in front of me who just wants it all to be ok...I'd told admin and a fellow sessional counsellor that I was gone. Well, going. I'd planned to stop working there in October. It doesn't help that the rooms are hotter than the sun. Pro-tip, have laptop continually in YouTube land, playing a vision of the sea, and the sound of the waves.  It helps. This is all I can do! This morning, I'm in the other place and I got the room with air conditioning..and I'm  working with adults who want therapy, and I get half an hour to write my notes. Bliss. After my notes were done for this morning I went back to the letter to my manager at -hotterthanthesun  place, and changed what I'd written during my holiday. Draft one had said that I was leaving  I don...

 Over on substack I've been wading through the words stuck and unsticking, writing the complaint. The complaint I said I'd never make. And at 4am this morning, having woken up in as cold a cold sweat is possible in this greenhouse world, I went back to edit out the name of the therapist's 'ethical body '. I have to view myself through the dominant culture's lens, and agree that I might be malicious and wrong. Unfortunately I'm very good at doing this and the force of it has already stopped me from speaking up when I should, too many times. It has meant that people assume my silence on a matter means that I'm fine. It has meant that I can't see myself as a victim until it is too late. And it still renders me powerless. After editing the post I started thinking about my mother in law who dared not to speak up. So she died of sepsis from bedsores. Yes, they are connected. One thing led to the other. A fundamental principle in her home was of keeping the...

 I'm letting myself imagine writing the complaint. I know - I said that I would never do it. I believed that the victim statement should be enough. But, but...just about everyone knows, therapy is giving a person space, safety and time to reassociate painful memories, catastrophic replay even, in such a way as to create safety and reintegration, to put episodic memory on to the autobiographical time-line. The term, epistemic justice, isn't in the ethical guidelines. But it exists within the guidelines as the ethical behaviour of transparency.  Of having nothing to hide. Without the therapist offering transparency, I did not have information enough to make sense of all that had happened I could not feel safe. I was in catastrophic replay and  retraumatised. Because I'd been through all this before in my marriage. My husband was very good at avoiding the truth, and hiding the whole story. And yes, I can back my accusations of flirting and lack of transparency with quotes an...

The two books I'm exploring for this section of my investigation into how Eros is handled during therapy, fit nicely together. The books I'm reading are: The story of Mrs Keech - How Prophecy Fails , and David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity . The question I'm thinking about right now is, what makes a good theory? The first part of answering how do we know is to create a good theory. Clearly a compelling explanation isn't always going to be a good theory! Mrs Keech might have had theories about her experience of channeling messages from beyond. Hopefully I will get to read them! Meanwhile what happened is, Mrs Keech received compelling communications from extraterrestrial beings who told her of cataclysmic events due to occur on a very specific date. When on that very specific date the earth failed to crack open and the ocean failed to drown America, and when a significant number of flying saucers failed to appear. The prophecy was, in Mrs Keech's mind, not...

Mrs Keech was queen of the compelling explanation. I'm surprised that her story hasn't been made into a film or stage play! Whilst at the same time her story is so familiar to us all, it might be considered cruel or insensitive to display exactly how mad we can all be. Leon Festinger studied Mrs Keech and her group to understand how disconfirmation affected her, and her group of believers. He was aware that empirical evidence absolutely does not shift a compelling belief! But he wondered what disconfirmation would do to the compelling explanation. His study of what happens next after nothing happens (instead of the great event) is fascinating. And informative! Because the therapist had a compelling explanation about therapy that conflicted with mine and I'd expected him to be interested in the difference! I was interested in his version, primarily because it said a lot about him, and because it was compelling - like an advert, or the words of a car salesman.  It was importa...

This is a problem that anyone who has experienced discrimination or bad therapy, faces. We recognise a wrong because we feel the physical version of the Shepherd tone, an endless descending sense of wrongness, and emotional pain. At this point, most of us think we are being too sensitive. And at the same time we think about all the times something similar has happened, and everything negative anyone has ever said about us. Because it must be us. As self defence clicks in, it is tempting to make an official complaint, trusting others to clarify and adjudicate. So many people, most people, me included ask if what's happening fits a publicly agreed on idea or description of a wrong? And if it doesn't - Ah, how do we know that what is happening is harmful. Self doubt, ignoring pain. We keep on feeling terrible. We hope it will change, stop, get better. We have no idea how this can happen, there is no reason, nor explanation that fits.  We have noticed a problem and tried to underst...

I fell asleep at half five this afternoon and I awoke at ten thirty -three hours ago. It's now early morning. I'm reading, making notes, I'm in my element.  Glad nothing is booked for today! I'm reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. It was my rare good fortune to have been part of a couple of forums (Listserv, remember that?) with him during the early 2000's and so here I am, learning from David again, by asking how do we know what we know? This is epistemology, it is the beginning, and possibly the subject, of the whole book. Relevant to me because epistemology is a large part of my personal research into the mechanism of the compelling explanation. A compelling explanation often has only an emotional component to make it an explanation.  'We don't know how it works it just does ' isn't a good explanation. It doesn't create knowledge, and how knowledge isn't made, how it is suppressed and destroyed is also epistemology. David w...

One of the legacies of my therapy is that I doubt myself about how bad the end of my marriage was. The therapist dismissed my fear and it was too easy to feel that he was right...and something of that injustice remains. Finding my diary shows me that things were much, much worse than I remember. It shows me that when I heard fear in my voice as I spoke about my husband to the therapist, my fear was justified.  So what had happened on April 4th 2020? I'd asked my husband the question again 'is it over (his relationship with a colleague) because it doesn't feel as if it is!'  Five months later, there was the final lie in September 2020. After that I was well on the way to understanding my true predicament. The metaphor was  'Alien' the film. My husband, like the synth - the character Ash - had had an agenda. The crew - our family - were expendable. And we had been unwitting hosts to something that was unable to stop itself tearing us apart from the inside out. Fo...

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 ...