The Black Box.

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...