Tomorrow, and beyond…

I am really dreading therapy tomorrow. I am so close to just not going at all. I’ve never felt like this about going to see K before. Even when I’ve kicked off via text or email and had to face her, or we’ve had a shitty session the one before and I’ve struggled to contain it all till the next session and been worried she’ll terminate me, I’ve never been this apprehensive. There’s a great big ball of dread in the pit of my stomach, and my chest keeps clenching when I think about going. It doesn’t help that I am totally exhausted and spaced out after the events of Sunday and definitely don’t need another awful and triggering session.

In part I think the dread is because the rupture has dragged on so long – two whole weeks since that awful phone call – but it is also because I’ve never felt I’ve needed to ‘confront’ K about something she has done before. In the past, and we’ve only had about 4 or 5 ruptures in nearly 3 years to be fair, I’ve been aware that I lost my shit and over-reacted, so it’s been kind of easy to go in and take responsibility and hear how she experienced me/whichever part was kicking off. And she has always apologised for getting things wrong in the past too, when she has. This time though, it feels different – I still think that she did the wrong thing, 100%, by picking up the phone to me and behaving as she did that day. I still think she should have contacted me since to apologise. And now it is complicated because of the fact she has a flare-up of her Hashimoto’s, and I had that awful situation with the young person last week, and then obviously a hugely traumatic time on Sunday which also brought up a lot of grief around being motherless. My whole system is so in need of comfort tomorrow, to just be somewhere safe and let out all the fear and pain and grief from Sunday. I am still so shaken that it is possible to experience that much pain in my body for no ‘real’ reason. And it doesn’t seem to be coincidence that I have been under so much emotional and mental strain and then the sickness bug hit and wham – my nervous system went into overdrive. That really frightens me a lot. I’m used to high levels of pain, more in the past than lately, but I do still get horrific headaches and full body pain fairly regularly, but that was something else.

So what I need and would normally be holding out for getting from K tomorrow, in therapy, is comfort, validation, a chance to tell my story and process all that happened. And a chance for young parts to cry and tell her how frightening and awful the pain was, and how stressful it was not being taken seriously for most of the day, and how distressing not having our mum was. Young parts want a story and time in the garden and to forget how much she hurt us because all that matters is that she is still here and we are okay. And yet that doesn’t really go hand-in-hand with repairing the biggest rupture we’ve ever had and needing to assert myself and tell her all the reasons she hurt us all, and all the things I don’t know how we can come back from. I can see myself just going in and crying a lot. And I am wondering whether I can ask to park the rupture till next Tuesday, if I can handle doing that, if it would even work, and if it would be possible to have any kind of connection with her despite it being in the room anyway…

And the bigger thing I am wondering is whether therapy is the right path for me at this point in my life. I am aware that I’ve really struggled but also that I’ve had two 5 out of 5 days in the past two weeks, of my own making. I just wonder whether I would have less ups and downs without my attachment/mother wound getting constantly re-opened in therapy, and also whether I am more capable of weathering the storms than I realised? I HATE being depersonalised all the time, for that to stop is my biggest hope from therapy, but maybe now is not the right time to be doing the work to bring that about. I am a single parent, I work full time plus in a job I love but that is full on, and therapy takes so much of my salary that despite working so hard we are still short of money and my debt is mounting and mounting. Without therapy there would be less financial worries and more money for things that reduce stress (e.g. a cleaner) and/or are fun. I do want to to do this work, and I do want to do it with K, but right now I am honestly wondering whether life wouldn’t be easier without therapy, and whether I’ve come as far as I can go for now. This may well be a very clever defence mechanism kicking in…. The weekend was another very real reminder of all she is not to me (but also that I now have good support in my life – real and online – that is not her and that got me through a very tough time). I guess time will tell. I feel I would gradually disintegrate without therapy, but also that some of the hurt I’ve endured the past two weeks would also be a thing of the past too. I’m not sure I would get triggered the same way if I attempted dating, and I do understand a lot more about how I feel and react in relationship now. Despite how far I’ve got to go in therapy still, I am aware how far I’ve come (though at times during this rupture it has not felt that way at all!). It helps to think this through and to know I have a choice over staying in therapy now, as it doesn’t always feel that way when parts are so in need and adult me struggles so much to contain everything. I sometimes feel I have no choice but to stay in therapy. Right now I am just not sure what is best for me and my system, and so I am just letting these doubts and wonderings be there.

In the meantime I am also trying to stay with the dread and reassure myself I can handle whatever the session/K throws at me tomorrow, and that whatever happens it will soon be over. Hopefully she will have spent time thinking through how to repair this and her role in it. Hopefully I won’t be on the receiving end of her anger again, as I think that would just finish me off after how traumatic and horrific the last few days have been. Hopefully we can come back from this. I’ve spent a lot of time the past week in particular really noticing how much great work we have done together and how much amazing, healing time the parts have had, and so I guess I am going in with gratitude for that as well, and I hope she isn’t going to burst my bubble (like when she called and I genuinely thought it was to apologise and offer support – how wrong was I then?!).