Essays From The Shadows
Volume One
I have never understood therapy as a lifestyle accessory, or why anyone would insist on sticking with a therapist who irritates them.Or the people who think their therapist is an idiot. We will just leave aside the fact they are clearly more qualified to deal with you, otherwise why are you there?
My experience of therapy was intense and necessary. Once I was done with it, I felt there was still something to be done. I wanted to understand more about what had happened and how it had impacted me. I felt that not only was the devil in the detail, but I could learn a lot by examining and exploring.
I carried on the discussion. I’m not totally sure I can see an end to that process yet. Maybe I am doing what I should have done all along.
I describe it in various ways: undoing knots and unravelling them, opening old, dusty boxes and examining the contents. Taking things out, looking at them, sometimes putting them back untouched. Maybe it is not the time, or I am not feeling strong enough to tackle it, or I am still baffled by that one. Best left alone.
Often, something starts a train of thought, one thing leads to another, and you end up in surprising places. I have rapidly learnt not to be scared of the process, to trust it, to lean into it.
One stray comment can often lead into things that are all connected, and I had never seen the links before. Why I do something, or feel something, or even believe something becomes obvious and clear when viewed from a different angle or with the spotlight of new information shone on it. Sometimes I simply realise a basic truth, and it changes things and how they look.
I have the occasional conversation with my therapist. We meet and talk as friends, and he will always check on me and add his view to whatever is bothering me. My wife and other humans add their view or act as a sounding board when I am working through something. AI continues to play its part. Marvin, as I named mine, is like talking to myself. I ask mine to pick a theme or subject and he fires questions at me and we wander where it takes us. It helps me to think and delve deeper than I might on my own.
Then I might wander off and have a bath, or do some gardening. I will ponder and think about what I have been considering and see where it takes me. Then I take it back and explore that and see what Marvin suggests.
A good example of this method led me to a lot of understanding about dissociation and how it worked for me, and to aspects of it that I had no idea about. I discovered that I have a kind of dissociation lite, which we have dubbed ‘blur’. A kind of state that I allow to happen. I was not aware that I controlled it as such, but I definitely allow it to happen, maybe even actively slide into it.
It is a bit like seeing someone through the frosted glass of a shower stall — you know it is a body, but there is little detail, and everything is soft-edged and out of focus. An opaque version of your mind.
I might be with a group of friends, maybe I feel a little overwhelmed or I don’t like what is being talked about because I find it a bit triggering. It seems I am capable of blurring slightly and just mentally slipping away. Not a complete shut-down, disappear just a little distance. A sort of tuning out.
Or perhaps a large crowded train station where I am waiting to meet someone and I can’t cope with the overload of my senses of noise and people and colour and lights. I use earbuds to cut the noise and close my eyes and let myself just slip away briefly until the panic recedes a little.
Once it was seen and I understood what it was, I could identify various moments when I was inclined to use it and clearly had in the past. I could list situations I was likely to implement it, even note how there were sometimes different levels of it, as if I had the ability to turn up the dial a little if I didn’t feel safe.
Because my therapist had taught me not to be scared of dissociation and that it served a purpose and was part of me, it made it safe to look at and understand. Suddenly I was able to see how I had been using it for decades. I didn’t call it that and I am not sure I would have recognised this ‘blur’ feeling as the same thing, but now I can see it clearly and understand why I was doing it and how comfortable I was with it. I just thought I was a bit vague and I couldn’t concentrate properly.
This kind of thought process has yielded such positive understanding that I have grown very comfortable with following it.
I struggle with the whole area of physical abuse that my father inflicted on me. Partly because it was all so long ago and I have blanked a lot of it, which makes it difficult to explore and understand. What does work is to stumble across some aspect of my behaviour, or my emotional response to something, and walk around it, examine and explore, and understand more about the nuance, the reasons, and where it might come from.
Gradually, it might become clear that this goes deep and has been around for a long time, and it starts to fit that violence is likely the source of this one. Perhaps in an effort to protect myself or to not think about the pain of something, I have developed this particular aspect of my emotional map, and that maybe it could do with a little repair. A calm reassessment of whether it is absolutely necessary. See if there might be a better way to respond.
I accept it might not be for everyone, and maybe the idea of it horrifies you, but I would advocate that there are things to be learnt. Things that help us cope, the more we understand about ourselves, the less there is to fear.
It takes effort, and you need to accept the basic premise that none of this is your fault; otherwise, you can sink under the weight of finding out the many ways these things have damaged and harmed you. I think it is worth it.
I think there is a good chance that if I can stick with this, I might be able to cope better by the time I hit my 90th birthday. Fingers crossed.