How to freak out – in one easy lesson
So today was a therapy day.
We had it all sorted about what we were going to do – ask her to provide 5 peer reviewed articles that mentioned using the eviction technique she is so keen on using and we’d consider it. In turn we had found 10 peer reviewed articles that mentioned other therapeutic techniques such as integration, working together, addressing the body only as the name given at birth etc. We were ready with our best defences happening! We even had scenarios about how to do the entire conversation sorted in our head – we were prepared I tell you, prepared…
So we left work with 20mins to get there – plenty of time, or so we thought. We got red lights, road works and ducks crossing the road (yes, that’s right – ducks). This all meant that we arrived 3 minutes late, which may not sound much, but when we have this thing about being on time, its huge. To make the whole time thing worse, she wasn’t ready. I have a feeling she was fitting us in during her lunchtime – so yes she is dedicated.
We get into the room and because it was such a hot day she had the windows open to let a breeze through. Because it was during lunchtime, builders were having a break a couple of sections away – they were LOUD! So, we freaked and switched. Our little toughie W came forward and was not impressed about being there. This caused further switching with the whole session rapidly turned pear shaped. Suddenly we were talking about people we chat with online… then the mother… then the fear of change, but the desire to… the fear of consequences of the changes if we make the wrong choices… the daddy long legs spider the was behind the chair… fear of hospitals… what constitutes manipulation and what motivates it… we can’t change other people so we can only change our reaction to them… the new arrangement of her office stuffed toys…
She admitted for the first time that she was having difficulty keeping up with it all. Geez lady try being on this side of the eyes and see how you feel! We went from needing to play with the soft toy on our keyring; to wanting to self injure with the keys; to needing to throw the keys; to putting the keys down; to wanting to break the fingers as we played with them; to wanting to run; then finally to actually walking really rapidly from the offices – someone might notice us if we ran, so we could only walk really fast.
What finally tipped the scales to the crazy arsed fast walking was the discussion about the childhood not being all that bad. There is this belief that it wasn’t all that bad – ok so we can’t remember most of it… but ya know it wasn’t too bad. Whenever we say this, there is an immediate reaction internally. We either get thrown a memory, or a body pain sweeps through almost as a punishment. This time we got thrown a new memory. We always had this partial memory of the sisters much older boyfriend walking towards us while we were curled up on the chair at night after the rest of the house was asleep – we were always bad sleepers so had gotten up to get some milk and he was sleeping on the couch, which we didn’t realise until we were in the room. The memory had always stopped with him being about three steps away, with us looking at his hands and middle. Well this time the full memory came through. We got swept into the flashback. We became aware of the room again at one minute after the session was meant to end. No idea how much time we lost or what happened, just aware of the need to run. She told us to take our time, but we just said we needed to run…
So we walked… rapidly…
As usual, we went back to work and just pretended that everything was fine. Thankfully no one saw us go into the office. The first person to talk to us was this amazing lady who just jokes, teases and soothes us. So we sat shaking with the constant smell of the chair we were sitting on that night filling our senses.
Well at least the therapist now knows a little bit more about what she’s dealing with! Wish it hadn’t happened like that though… we had such a good argument surrounding the whole therapy approach happening too… *sigh*
