Interesting session today. I began by telling R about the public speaking workshop, and could barely look at her whilst doing so. I enjoyed her smile of recognition, though there was an air of ‘It took you that long to notice?’ I found it hard to explain why the exercise had such an impact on me, and how I had been required to fend off by the inner critic. She reminded me that she had spent time in previous sessions of ‘Trying to find you, almost.’
We then talked some more about the critic and R pointed out that the critic seems to come forward when I’m at my most real. She asked whether the experience at the workshop hand made me want to change anything about the space. I reiterated that the most significant element of this is about me feeling of alone with it.
‘Yes…’
‘I think it’s about –that sounds weird, I know… I think it’s about being as physically connected as possible.’ I don’t know why but I was expecting R to be more weirded out by its all. I think we have established how important that is to me as a marker of safety.
I railed against them on a ‘They knew what they were doing’ type rant.
‘You sound definite about that – does that make it more painful?’

‘I accept that I did nothing to bring this on myself, but I didn’t walk away.’

‘I heard you bat the self-blame away then. If you had known then what you know now, would you have walked away?’

I waffled for a while, going back and forth ‘If I had walked away, and something terrible had happened, I would not have known.’
I went on to say that the emotional cost would have been less.
‘What strikes me is the length of the deception. It hadn’t really struck me before. You were in the situation for so long, do you think it would have made any difference if you had known sooner?’
I wanted to make a point about how I only knew Chris for a year, and that made very little difference to my grief, but I didn’t.
‘There was a trajectory to both experiences, but with what I was exposed to in January 2011, there was no respect for me.’
‘You hold that [the experience with Chris] in high esteem, not just because you have something to compare it to.’
We talked about the value of that opportunity to release. I waffled some more about the impact of the experience. ‘I feel furious and hurt.’

‘I think that is the first time I have ever heard you name specific emotions.’
‘If by some twisted experiment, they were here now, I cannot imagine being angry with them.’
‘I am curious as to what ‘being angry’ would look like to you.’
‘I can’t imagine shouting.’
‘What can you imagine?’
‘I would want them to know how much this hurts. The impact of it now is that I don’t feel…’
‘You don’t feel…?’
‘I am going to change that and say I don’t feel.’
‘You don’t feel? You have described crying in the past, and I know there’s a lot of shame that comes with that for you. I think you called it a loss of control? But you don’t feel the emotion?’
‘I am so wrapped up in waiting for it to be over that I don’t.’
‘It’s almost like there’s a fear of feeling.’
‘Of how that will be…’
‘And what it will feel like?’
R talked about two things to close that have recently come to her attention: vicarious trauma, and another diagram based exercise – envisaging the mind with a tap, and creating opportunities to let some stuff out now and then.

‘It could be that this space is one opportunity for you to let some stuff out.’