The Walls Need to Come Down

Tags

father, fear, fear of failure, placement, vulnerable core, walls

I have reached a crunch point in my counselling placements. Whilst I have two clients who are both past their sixth session I have lost at least three in the first few sessions because they didn’t feel that I was “contactable”. In other words I am feeling extremely anxious because it’s a first session with a new client (I’m not good at meeting new people outside the counselling room either) and when I feel anxious I put the barriers up, and that makes me unreachable.

The clients I have kept are under 40 and the ones I have lost are over 40. Maybe I find the younger ones easier to reach because I’m not transferring my father onto them.

I suspect it all comes down to fear of not being good enough, of anything less than perfection being inadequate, of my saying less through fear of saying the wrong thing. I then say nothing, or say it badly or just trip over my tongue. I worry about interrupting a flow preferring to wait for a pause that never comes. I worry about how the client is receiving me to the point that she’s not because my defences are up.

More than simply relaxing I need to tear down my walls, to make myself vulnerable. I cannot sit back and wait for the client to come to me; I have to reach out to them emotionally. It’s not that I don’t care or aren’t empathic but that I don’t feel confident or even safe enough with a new client to let my emotions show.

To a certain extent this is where I have reached in my own personal therapy. I have inch by inch over the last few years become more confident, more open and more capable of dealing with the ups and downs of life. I know where my comfort zone ends and push beyond it more. I look after myself better than I used to.

But, and it’s a huge but, at my core, deep inside I am a very vulnerable small person who is scared of being challenged and failing to respond appropriately. I am scared of being judged and found wanting. And all I can see as I write this is my father’s face hovering in front of me telling me that I am failing yet again.

All this fear and anxiety is a barrier to my growth. It’s a barrier to my personal growth and now it’s proving a barrier to my professional growth as a counsellor. I’m feeling as if that slow inching forward needs to turn into a gallop that resolves itself before I get another new client. I’m also aware that these clients are coming in a vulnerable position in need of support that I am failing to give them. I’m not filling the basic core condition that the client must feel that empathy and unconditional positive regard coming from me.

I don’t know how to resolve this. I don’t know how to resolve this at a gallop. I am wondering if the sensible thing is to defer for a year so that I can have a bit more time to work through this but I also know that will feel like a failure and hit me emotionally and also be harder financially. I don’t even want to have to explain to people why I’m taking another year.

There are some practical issues as well. We learn how to be a person-centred counsellor in a purist way, learning with our peers who behave well when they act as clients. The difference between that and real world clients who are much more vulnerable and much more scared and willing to run away from it all is huge. I do not think we spent enough time covering this initial first few sessions and the vulnerability of them. I haven’t yet found my words, my ways of explaining how it all work to the level necessary in those first few sessions, of explaining just enough to keep them going without scaring them off. This I can better prepare for.

I don’t know whether my peers are experiencing or have experienced similar issues They tend to talk about clients they’ve had for longer rather than the ones they’ve lost early on. I do feel that I have fallen behind those who have completed their first 100 client hours and who seem to act with much greater confidence, a confidence which is totally understandable. I do not feel like sharing where I am with this process and opening myself up.

Looking at the worst case scenario rather than hiding from it, I don’t become a counsellor, whether I finish the course or not. I have to find a different way forward in my life and start a serious job hunt for something else that allows me to care for people but without making me so vulnerable. If it required more training there would be additional financial difficulties which would sap my strength but I would find a way. Starting again would set me back and I would have to learn to see these past few years as a journey of self-discovery rather than a failure to reach a target. And yes, I would have to get over the shame.

So Frustrated

Tags

choppy sea, could do better, coursework, external validation, father, fear, introjects, liberation, therapy

I have this knot of fear in my gut and it barely unravels unless I’m really distracted.

Having talked to my therapist about lack of confidence I went back to college this week and talked about it in our triad session. I considered picking some other topic but decided to go with it. It was actually a really good session where she pushed me to say, not what I wanted to say but what I needed to say.

The next day however I woke up with this same knot of tension in my stomach and the same sinking pit in my head that I do not want to try and cross. My heart is pounding just writing this. Although my head has been busy with monologues running through it, now that it comes to putting fingers to keys it shuts up and is lost for words.

I am scared. For the first time in my life, other than having children, I am doing something that is just for me, that is a calling. I want to be a professional counsellor. It feels good and I think I can do well at it and actually help people. It is not a job that will do but it is more than that.

Last time I felt a calling to a career I was a teenager. That was a long time ago. I wanted to work backstage in theatre and went to drama college after leaving school. That all went to pot and it took me over ten years before I could walk into a theatre again, even as a mere member of the audience. I still haven’t got over it and probably never will. It was my dream escape from my father and I still wonder how it would all have turned out differently had I gone to a better college. I didn’t have time or space to grieve that loss, not properly. And here I am again, filling my head up with the idea that I can do something I want to do and be the person I want to be. My parents finally asked about the course, but their onely interest was whether there is a job at the end of it and that was it. If I fell down flat at it they would give that same disappointed sigh and remind me what a failure I am when I stand on my own two feet.

So some of that fear is anticipating a future loss that would have echoes with the past but that may not actually happen.

There is fear over writing the assignments. Because they are not just write 5,000 words on this topic but are broken down into small questions and paragraphs of answers, these are not “proper” essays and aren’t challenging enough, even though I find the idea of working on them quite hard. This is my father’s voice again, telling me that if it’s not as challenging as it could be then it’s really not much of an achievement and not worth investing myself in it. It is also the fact that by revealing myself in the essays I am opening myself for external validation and the result, in the eyes of my father and my last school, is simply “could do better”. External validation was always about showing what I didn’t know rather what I do.

The placement interview really threw me in terms of feeling judged and evaluated and found wanting. I don’t like it. Again it’s my father. His voice ran through our triad session as he kept telling me I’m not worthy for one reason or another.

I felt this session was powerful, as did our tutor who observed the second half of it. I felt, as our tutor commented afterwards, that my counsellor kept my nose to the grindstone and tried hard not to let me wiggle away. As I know from therapy, if I can wiggle away from the painful stuff then I will. I started wondering whether this style of therapy was what I needed rather than the more relaxed sessions I have with my therapist, something I will have to bring up.

There is also the fear of the big unknown. At the moment my life has a routine, however haphazard and a plan for the next two years which consists of getting on with the course, helping 4son finish school, getting a placement and maybe some other work. After that though all I can see is big waves on the sea. Not stormy, but big. And the choppy sea is empty. The future is unknown and a huge blank canvas. Once qualified I will get a job, somewhere and work towards accreditation. But what type and where and all those sorts of questions are total blanks. Yet I want to swim in that dangerous sea.

This whole journey for me consists of:

• becoming single;
• quitting smoking;
• getting therapy;
• blogging;
• accepting that I am a decent parent;
• certificate course;
• daily meditation;
• daily Pilates;
• currently working on sleep;

My listener pointed out that I was terrible at giving myself credit as this is a long list of worthy achievements. Not in my father’s eyes was my immediate thought. All this can be summarised as liberating myself from my parents’ shackles, or introjects, or conditions of worth. It’s about becoming free and I am not yet free.

A Hard Weekend

Tags

2son, autism, fear, journey, love, pain

I spent Friday going to visit 2son at his new school. They are very happy with him and he is settling down well. We then managed to spend a couple of hours together and he talked of his fear of getting depressed again and how he couldn’t accept his progress and how well he had settled in as he expected to crash. It was a difficult conversation but much better to have it although I found it so hard to not put my arms around him and never let him go. He is as settled as he can be.

It was a long day travelling, 16 hours door to door that I did by train. Whether it was the length of the day or the conversations I had with him I do not know but I spent the weekend feeling emotionally and physically drained. I felt a need to recover and recuperate, to curl up on the sofa and watch crap TV, so I mostly did.

I felt and still feel the tension in my body, a tightness in my chest and butterflies in my stomach. I worry for him but I also feel the parallels with my own journey. I am beginning to grasp the need to look after myself, physically as well as mentally. I want to do so more in terms of developing mindfulness and physical activity that I risk worrying myself about doing everything I have decided I need to do. Self care is so complicated. 2son has had a brief taster of mindfulness and apparently of yoga. He is very disconnected from his body and his mind and has a long way to go.

I think the conversation I had with him reminded me of how far he has to go and that while the getting out of bed and going to college is brilliant, he also has to work on all these other aspects and learn to cope with himself and at this he is a mere egg. He will have to go through a lot of painful self examination, trying and failing at all sorts of things in order to develop ways to live that he can cope with and I think I’m just feeling heavy from the thought of what he has yet to go through. I love him so much and yet I cannot do this for him. He has to do it himself. But he is in a good place and there is much warmth from the staff and he is clearly well looked after. Choosing this place was my contribution. Now he has to work with the staff and make his.

I Almost Died

Tags

body, fear, physical

That is of course a complete and total exaggeration.

I have however been made to feel completely physically inadequate. In size, shape, strength and stamina. I turned into my mother. I needed help from my son and I panicked for a moment that I was going to be totally stuck and need outside assistance and I was already considering being ridiculed as an unfit helpless tourist who couldn’t walk up a hill without help. I had a moment when everything stopped. I couldn’t go up and I couldn’t go down.

We were climbing Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. A bare 251m above sea level it’s a nice amble for the locals, an occasion to take the dog out for a walk. Most of it is just a gentle walk with some steeper bits but naturally my children wanted to go up the very steep ascents. I let them do the final ascent on their own while I went round the gentler path. I still tripped up and kept pausing to look at the view, otherwise known as catching my breath. And I needed to catch it as I was struggling. It was a good thing that my hay fever and all side effects are minimised when I’m away from home or I wouldn’t have made it to the top at all. Eventually I did only to be told that I was slow and needed to exercise more. 3son told me that the Wii was insufficient and I needed to go for walks and drink less beer. Thanks.

The End of Another Year

Tags

fear, friends, improvement, progress, struggle

I started this blog three years ago in misery:

…a life that seems, other than my children, to have been a complete waste of time. I find it difficult to look forward to the future as I see no reason for it being any better than the past.

I have come a long way since then.

I’m finishing this year on a far more up-beat note. I still have my moments of course and while I would like to consider lowering my daily dosage of anti-depressants that thought also fills me with fear. In any case, it’s not a decision to be made over the Christmas holiday period.

I’ve improved.

Packing Boxes

Tags

choices, dreams, ex, ex2, fear, moving, nightmares, packing boxes, roots, stability

I wake up with my heart pounding.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have dreams where ex2 has re-appeared in my life, in my house, in my bedroom and all of a sudden I have to get rid of him again. I tend to be surrounded by packing boxes. While I understand the horror I feel at having him back in my life again after no communication in nine years, I’ve only just started to think about the packing boxes.

My parents moved around a lot, always for jobs and a better life without considering other consequences. My father has since acknowledged that the lack of stability harmed me and 1sis. It’s a bit late.

I first moved when I was one. I don’t remember it at all. But I’d only lived in Yorkshire for one year and considering that is the one place my father has emotional ties to such that he brought me up to consider myself Yorkshire first, it was actually quite confusing to not have spent more time living there.

Then, when I was seven, we moved abroad. I didn’t want to move and was scared stiff of the idea of living in a different country, with different languages and customs. I remember I only started sounding positive when my parents told me we were going to move to a large “manor” which sounded awfully posh and exciting. My father went over first, staying in a flat and we went over and visited once or twice until our house was ready. I lost my red bag in the move and that hurt.

When we moved back to London I wasn’t told until it was a done deal and then they couldn’t understand the fact that I didn’t want to go. I’d just made my first good friend after having changed schools and life actually seemed quite brilliant. We didn’t have a house to move to so again we rented a flat for six months. We even stayed at a friend’s holiday flat for a few weeks while finding somewhere to rent.

That was the house I stayed at until I left home, after which I moved around so many times (over twelve at a rough count) and for so many reasons but never once because I had decided that the move was what I wanted to do.

Even this place where I am now, although it is home and will be home forever, was not mine to choose. We were homeless and the council gave it to us. It is possibly the greatest piece of luck that I’ve had in my life that I accidentally came to live somewhere that feels like home, the first time I’ve wanted to put down roots and paint the walls.

I have friends who occasionally bump into people on the street that they went to school with and never saw since. I find that incredibly bizarre. I’m part envious although I also think how boring to have lived your whole life in the same place.

Packing boxes represent that lack of stability, the lack of roots, the lack of choice, the feeling of not being in control. There are also memories that I’ve put into boxes and don’t want to open as well as fear of what I might have to put into boxes next.

When I dream that I’ve finally escaped ex2 I usually end up in some flat or house surrounded by my children, blank packing boxes and totally blank white walls, ready for me to make my mark on. The power to do so is all mine but what I feel is desperation that I have to start all over again from nothing with no knowledge of where I am, what I am or even what lies outside the front door. Moreover I have to do it all on my own, with no help or support. It’s a blank canvas for life that scares the crap out of me.

Where Next

Tags

2son, 3son, 4son, anger, ASD, befriending, boarding school, brothers, cohesion, counselling, decision, family therapy, fear, frustration, future, SEN, sons, statement, teeth

On Tuesday I had my counselling session and we had a little bit of a summary, as she has only eight weeks left. Had I achieved what I wanted to? No I haven’t, but with everything that’s going on I don’t see how I could. She hasn’t challenged me as much as last year’s counsellor but I also think it’s been as much as I could do to just stay afloat.

Last week we had a family therapy session with 3son and 4son. I voiced my concerns that with 2son no longer being at home full time I had expected the burden to be diminished (or at least to feel so) and it hadn’t and I found that extremely frustrating and difficult. We talked about behaviour at home and our interaction, how the constant arguments wear me down and the fact that we don’t go out enough as a family. This is partly since 3son started secondary school and it no longer became practical to go out in the evening on a school night but mostly down to my total lack of energy and enthusiasm.

I also feel that since I’m splitting us up at home so we have fewer fights that also means that we’re spending less time at home together as a family as well, which may be practical in the short term but it’s not really good for family cohesion. I also said, which 4son agreed, that since he’d started secondary school he felt far superior to 3son, as if the age gap between them had widened which contributes to him belittling 4son and making the frequent snide remarks that cause him to burst into tears.

We discussed all this and agreed to go out more. The therapist also agreed to recommend 4son for a befriending scheme, something I’ve been asking for the two of them over the last few years. This means that someone will come round at weekends, take 4son out and be his friend which will enable 3son and 4son to do different things more so I can take 3son out on his own or let him have space at home without his little brother.

And then came half term and my lack of teeth, making me feel like a social pariah. We had a day out in Richmond going out to lunch and to the cinema. I suggested a museum on the Saturday before going back to school and they chose the South Bank instead. They watched a free parkour demonstration and then had a go at the workshop which they both enjoyed very much and we ended up having a lovely full day out helped undoubtedly by the sunshine. We need to do more of this.

I also went to a progress meeting about 2son (doing this without front teeth was horrible as I have to put greater effort into enunciating clearly and I can’t stop lisping) during the half term. We discussed his lack of progress during home visits and wondered what to do about it. One suggestion was that the council need to look at statementing him, something that was put on hold when he was initially sectioned, with a view to looking at boarding school of some description to give him a full structure to the day. The consultant thought I’d be reluctant to consider this but it seems to be a great idea. Other than that the only suggestion came from me which was to suggest trying him during the week which is what we are doing this week. I now have a copy of the report of the ASD assessment which is interesting. I’m not entirely convinced but feel I need to research more before I can fully understand the implications. They also talked about next month’s meeting being a discharge meeting which, given the circumstances and lack of progress, really pisses me off.

As I am writing this, 2son is upstairs sleeping away. This does not bode well for being at school in two hours. I went and picked him up yesterday morning, took him out for a quick lunch and delivered him to CATE. He was enthusiastic and spoke to his teacher about starting GCSEs in September and going back to proper school. Lovely, but as both us adults said, it starts with going to school every day and that starts with going to bed at a reasonable time and getting up the next day. Not a problem said he.

Liar.

Last night 4son went to bed. 3son followed him after having had some time on his own with 4son. 4son stayed up. We had agreed he would go to bed at 11pm which is his normal routine. 11pm came and went. Half past vanished. At midnight he said that he just didn’t want to go to bed and that was it. I had been struggling to keep my eyes open and gave up shortly after midnight and went to sleep. As far as I can tell, he stayed up all night and went to be when the alarm went off at 6 o’clock this morning.

So I have no idea what we’re going to do next. He’s thrown a couple of hissy fits when staff have told him to wash, saying that he doesn’t like being told what to do and he really didn’t like the fact that some of the patients had complained about him being smelly. Other than the fact that he’s out of my hair there is very little real progress. He has finished a modular qualification (ASDAN) and is moving onto the next level. This has given him a strong sense of achievement.

As we have abandoned weekend visits, I’ve booked a 4 day holiday for the rest of us next weekend, with each of the boys taking a sneaky day off school along with their INSET day. We’re going to York and staying in an extravagant hotel. I don’t think I’ve been away from home since August so it will provide a much needed opportunity to run away from it all.

So I’m feeling fed up with the world and am wondering how I’m going to cope with all this over the next few years. I have a sense of impending doom or mounting alarm about how I am going to manage over the next five years when I will have three teenagers at once, with arguments and fights on the increase. I really am worried. I would also quite like to have a semblance of life for me and that chance just seems to be disappearing down the plughole. Fast.

In other news my father is back at home and mending very very slowly. We won’t know for a while how successful the operation was but at least he’s recovering.

 

Numb

Tags

2son, anxiety, apprehension, fear, mental health act, panic, sectioning

My brain has disappeared.

The consultant psychiatrist has come to make her official visit to see 2son before signing off the paperwork. The GP (who should be mine but could be anyone out of the practice) and the official social worker also need to come. Then paperwork is submitted and it has to happen within 5 days.

I’ve deferred my jury service until October. It will probably clash with half term but need it out of the way.

All I really have to do is to pack an emergency bag for him and be ready to go with him.

Social services should provide a couple of people and a car to take him but they need to confirm. I wasn’t actually sure until I asked just now that I’d go with him in the first instance.

I tried discussing it with him again and he just doesn’t want to. I suppose it saves facing up to reality but it means that I’m just terrified for him. The first 24 hours of this are going to be awful for me, let alone for him. I want to get it over and done as I’m just numb at the thought of it all, that is when I’m not being scared.

The Next Step

Tags

2son, fear, friends, mental health act, Section 2, support, unknown

Last week I met with 2son’s therapist and consultant psychiatrist. The consultant had consulted with various colleagues as well as social services and decided that section 2 of the Mental Health Act was the way to go.

This allows him to be taken, against his will, into hospital for a maximum of 28 days for assessment. He will be going into a well-known private hospital and I’m going there tomorrow to have a look.

I’ve talked to 2son about it and he hasn’t really expressed a view. I think it all sounds a bit remote to him. He may co-operate. He may not. The hospital would clean him up which would be a good thing, if not the main issue. They will encourage him to talk and I would hope he would get so bored that he does. But it is a huge gamble.

Removing him out of his home, considering he hasn’t gone past the front door since October is going to be a shock for him. If it was an adult being sectioned they would send round a couple of policemen. As it is we’re not quite sure who will effect his physical removal. Again of course he may co-operate or he may go kicking and screaming.

The thought of all this scares me. Will he ever forgive me? Will it work? What happens if he still doesn’t talk? Tomorrow I will find out about visiting and what will happen while he is in hospital. It’s a few stops away on the train line and a short walk so it’s hopefully not too bad.

On the practical front I will spend much of those 28 days, or portion thereof, cleaning and nit-combing everybody so we get rid of these blasted things once and for all. We did have a big clean up of the boys’ room just before the Easter holidays so that task is not quite as major as it could have been.

I’m struggling to cope with all this, just to state the obvious. 3son is really fed up of 2son and is being a total pain in the arse, arguing non-stop, making 4son cry and then accusing me of preferring 4son over him. 4son is still unhappy at school with his teacher and unhappy at home with 3son. They both need something to be done for their sanity. It even crossed my mind that if I’m not allowed / don’t have to visit 2son every day, then I could take a short break with 3son and 4son and have a few days holiday.

This just looms over me. I’m thinking about it all even when I’m not thinking about it. I’m terrified about what could happen and I’m trying not to hope too much in case I’m disappointed. This could be a fruitful next step, but even if it does work and breaks 2son’s silence the road to recovery is going to be a long slow one.

So I haven’t had the energy to write. I’ve been spending too much time mindlessly playing stupid games on Facebook which I was actually thinking of giving up. This Easter holiday I’ve indulged myself in a 3000 piece jigsaw which I bought years ago and never found the couple of weeks needed to do it.

I need to try and write here again and keep it up as it does help my sanity. I’ve almost completed by third month of exercise programme although that too has slipped in the holidays but I’m holding onto that. We’ve eaten a fair amount of junk food this holiday which won’t kill anyone and after ten days I’ve just about caught up on my sleep. I’m  getting more headaches, sleeping worse and once or twice have over-indulged in alcohol, forgetting that my anti-depressants really don’t like that and punish me the next day.

I’m thankful to my friends who give me fun times without needing to dwell on my life, but who listen when I talk about it all. I’m thankful for BFF1 who is going to try and come with me tomorrow despite her own disastrous holiday. I’m thankful to BFF2 for listening and being supportive while having his own crap to deal with. I’m thankful to you all for reading and offering me support. I have been reading many of your posts but I just can’t find the energy to construct sentences in support.

Nightmares

Tags

2son, escape, fear, nightmares, repeating dreams

I’ve been having nightmares. Ones I haven’t had for five years or more. I dream of ex2 suddenly being back in my home; of having to pack around him, of moving the children out, of sitting in a new totally empty and blank flat with children and boxes. I dream that I have to get him out all over again. I have to somehow pack without him noticing, in secret and run out of the door before he wakes up and catches me leaving with the boys. How I walk out the old door with furniture and boxes is down to dream magic. Shades of Bluebeard.

The scenario is always slightly different; there are half a dozen different flats, all fairly dingy. There’s that feeling of total panic that I have four small children and I have to unpack, create a home, cook dinner and put them in beds that I haven’t found yet. That feeling of loneliness and panic is still much better than the terror that he’s come back, that he’s wormed his way somehow into my home and I’ve got to find a way of getting away from him, a task I thought I had completed.

It took me a year to get ex2 out of the house in real life and that was a nightmare. A real living nightmare. I first dreamed these dreams in that year and the months that followed. I thought I was rid of them. So why have they come back?

Well it pains me to say it, but 2son has me trapped in much the same way. He’s my son so I can’t throw him out and I don’t want to. But whatever is going on in his head hangs over the rest of us, casting a black pallor onto everyone’s thoughts. I’m helpless. I can encourage him to do stuff, any sort of stuff, but he decides. He decides when he’s going to co-operate, whether with me or with his younger brothers. He decides whether he’s going to join us at mealtimes or not. He wants to have his way, to not let me dictate. If I do dictate, he’ll either accept it or throw a strop but he’ll decide. There is no progress either so I have no sense that life is moving forward for him, however slowly.

I feel that life is on hold while we all wait for 2son to decide what he’s going to do. I feel that we have to manoeuvre our life round him, to accommodate his way of life.

In many ways this is what I had to do with ex2. With ex1 I had to work round his alcoholism and the way he wanted to live our life. My father dictated how our household ran and we had to do what he said to make life easier for us all (how much easier would rebellion have been in the long term!). These three have dictated my life in a miserable way and my son, unwittingly is following in their footsteps.

This is why I’m having nightmares. It’s all perfectly logical.

We’re going to have another team meeting for 2son, with the GP this time and see what plan B is, plan A requiring his co-operation. In the meantime, I feel stuck in a nightmare I could never have dreamed up and this time I cannot wake myself up.