Charlotte

I hate com­mu­ni­cat­ing by text so I’ve writ­ten down a few thoughts. Only you can access this page and I’ll just delete it in a week or so.

Here are a few thoughts about seek­ing, and mak­ing use of coun­selling and ther­a­py.

The biggest lim­i­ta­tion of any of these is what you bring to the table. I’m sor­ry to say, most peo­ple per­ceive their issues to be one thing when they’re very often quite dif­fer­ent. And very often thoughts are intrin­si­cal­ly linked to behav­iour pat­terns, the way we are in the world has a huge impact upon our thoughts, and often rein­force our beliefs and per­cep­tions about our­selves. In oth­er words, you can’t change one with­out some sig­nif­i­cant change in the oth­er. And this becomes the biggest dan­ger with ther­a­py. You think you do the change in your head, but it doesn’t trans­late into any­thing on the ground. And that’s when it becomes dan­ger­ous. You think you’ve already done the work when in real­i­ty you’ve only just scratched the sur­face.

Oh, and because you’ve spo­ken about a bit of stuff with some­one, you think you feel bet­ter, and you do, but only until what­ev­er issue it was decides to come back again and you find you’re doing the same stuff again, and think­ing the same thoughts.

And you can get away with this with a ther­a­pist, and a phone one even more so. The degree of sep­a­ra­tion is sim­ply too great, and I’m sor­ry to say, the ther­a­py becomes a space where you can play at being dif­fer­ent with­out actu­al­ly tak­ing the risk of doing the same in the real world..the place where your life actu­al­ly hap­pens.

You had four ses­sions with your phone ther­a­pist. I’m sor­ry, but the issues you car­ry with you have had a mas­sive impact on many parts of your life, and 4 ses­sions is lit­er­al­ly the bare, get­ting to know you stage. You cer­tain­ly won’t do any real work in so short a time.

And you then decid­ed you were fine, and didn’t need any more ses­sions. As soon as you told me that I knew that you didn’t get near doing any real work, you prob­a­bly feel a bit bet­ter because you have spo­ken about a  few things, your ther­a­pist has bigged you up and giv­en you a burst of ener­gy and con­fi­dence, but the sim­ple real­i­ty that very lit­tle is like­ly to have changed in so few ses­sions.

How impor­tant it is to devel­op this in a nor­mal set­ting, in oth­er words real life. Devel­op­ing trust with a ther­a­pist is a very arti­fi­cial set­ting. You have no invest­ment in a ther­a­pist, you employ a ther­a­pist, you can walk away from a ther­a­pist. There is no invest­ment, noth­ing to lose, no risk being tak­en. True trust involves am emo­tion­al risk. That’s why it becomes pow­er­ful. It’s hard, it feels scary and threat­en­ing, you’ll feel very exposed and vul­ner­a­ble, weak, child­like, frus­trat­ed, angry and a mul­ti­tude of oth­er feel­ings, all of which are swirling around your head a lot of the time any­way. And part of this is because you don’t seem to release that valve. The per­son you show to the world is always the com­pe­tent, cheery, enthu­si­as­tic Char­lotte. You will nev­er ever allow the vul­ner­a­ble or any­thing less than total­ly in con­trol and com­pe­tent Char­lotte to the world, and that includes the peo­ple clos­est to you. That’s why it’ll nev­er change, your so invest­ed in the cha­rade, and you’re so bloody good at it.

And do you think you need a ther­a­pist. Your issues are deep seat­ed and have their roots way in the past, in your fam­i­ly, par­ents etc, but they man­i­fest them­selves in the way you func­tion in the present. Try­ing to get to the root of what dri­ves you may be inter­est­ing, but won’t change how you actu­al­ly func­tion. Because that very much needs to be in the present.

This is part of the rea­son why I’m actu­al­ly very mis­trust­ful of coun­sel­lors and ther­a­pists. So many of them seem to live in a rar­efied world, most­ly in their heads, which some­how doesn’t trans­late into real life. And get­ting a good one who actu­al­ly under­stands how real peo­ple func­tion, and yet have a deep­er under­stand­ing of emo­tion­al issues are real­ly quite rare.

So what are the issues you have as far as I can see

Trust well you don’t. You do a lot of things with a lot of peo­ple that appears to imply trust, but you’re nev­er real­ly quite sure. Trust is an inter­nal thing, not exter­nal.

Your inabil­i­ty to be vul­ner­a­ble. You sim­ply can’t allow any­one to see you as real­ly are. It’s far too risky.

Lack of emo­tion. There’s a lot going on, but you hold it all in and nev­er show it. It’s all leak­ing out all of the time and part of your exhaus­tion is keep­ing a lid on it all the time

Com­pe­tence..you have to be able to do every­thing, and that includes tak­ing care of your own men­tal health. This means amongst oth­er things that you’ll find it real­ly hard to accept help…. Ever. This sit­u­a­tion is an exam­ple of that.

And under­neath the calm exte­ri­or is a swirling whirl­wind of thoughts and emo­tions which are ever present and as far as I can see, don’t ever seem to dis­ap­pear. You’re very good at appear­ing calm..but you’re not, not real­ly.

And the real­i­ty that you kind of live on a knife edge, know­ing that even small things have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate effect on your well being, and you’re vul­ner­a­ble to those trig­gers at any time.

It’s inter­est­ing that you say the book has thrown you. I thought it would. It’s one thing to hear lit­tle sound bites about this stuff and very dif­fer­ent to real about the full pic­ture in all its detail along with the impli­ca­tions for how it’s like­ly to impact on your life in the future. But the book did also have a strong mes­sage. You can change this stuff, and often to key to doing this is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and hon­esty about what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing.

It’s inter­est­ing that you say that you trust me, par­tial­ly because of how lit­tle you actu­al­ly have trust­ed me. And this is some­how the point. If this is true, and I won’t dis­pute it, it feels like you’ve nev­er actu­al­ly opened up to me, been able to be tru­ly hon­est with me, or tak­en any real risk of shar­ing with me….and yet..

Oh, and if you’re won­der­ing where this is com­ing from with me. It’s very sim­ple. I was a seri­ous­ly fucked up kid and if I hadn’t had some seri­ous help from a cou­ple of peo­ple in the ear­ly days would prob­a­bly end­ed on the wrong end of the men­tal health ser­vices, using drugs, or oth­er weird fucked up shit. So I like to think that in some way, I’m pay­ing for­ward the help I had in the past, if and where pos­si­ble. Oh, and I recog­nise where you’re at. All the stuff you’re doing now is pret­ty much the same as I used to do. That’s actu­al­ly one of the rea­sons I could actu­al­ly help you..I recog­nise where you’re com­ing from. Oh, and you may not get this, but I do know a hel­lu­va lot about how peo­ple func­tion. Prob­a­bly far more than pret­ty much any ther­a­pist you’re like­ly to get. That prob­a­bly sounds very arrogant…may well be, but 30 years in men­tal health teach­es you a few things.

Oh and part of the rea­son I’m not incred­i­bly hurt and pissed off with you for the way you treat­ed me, which real­ly wasn’t very nice, was that I know the kind of women that I’m attract­ed to is pret­ty much like you. I know that if I like a woman she’s like­ly to appear to be super­fi­cial­ly con­fi­dent, has her life in order, and appar­ent­ly func­tions well, but this often masks deep inse­cu­ri­ties, emo­tion­al insta­bil­i­ty, and usu­al­ly an inabil­i­ty to devel­op a gen­uine­ly inti­mate con­nec­tion and trust. I know this because I’ve been through it too many times not to recog­nise it. Does this remind you of any­one. I keep hop­ing that I’ll break the pat­tern at some point, but this isn’t hap­pen­ing any-time soon. And yet I also believe in putting myself ful­ly into any new rela­tion­ship so that any fear or anx­i­ety I have about the rela­tion­ship isn’t going to be a part of whether it works or not. It either will, or it won’t. This is why I try to be clear and hon­est, and not hold stuff back. You get all of me..and one day, per­haps that will be enough for some­one. But I’m also real­is­tic enough to know that I’m like­ly to be attempt­ing to be with some­one who is essen­tial­ly dam­aged and a lit­tle broken…and that’s not real­ly like­ly to work. So when it doesn’t, it’s not a huge sur­prise.

If you want to fix your­self, I’m hap­py to help.

But if you don’t want my help, I won’t be offend­ed, but please, get it some­where and do it prop­er­ly. None of this dip­ping a toe in and out shit. You have some seri­ous issues that have a mas­sive impact on your life every sin­gle day. Sor­ry if you don’t want to hear this but

• If you could change any of this, by your­self, you would have done it already
• You real­ly don’t have the knowl­edge or the resources to do this on your own. See the point above.
• You need to accept that you need help to move this for­ward. Watch­ing a few Insta­gram video’s may help lit­tle by lit­tle, but they will nev­er real­ly chal­lenge you, or cre­ate seri­ous change.
• This is not a self-help sit­u­a­tion. This stuff is with you every day in some way or oth­er. If I were you, I would pri­ori­tise get­ting this part of your life sort­ed above any­thing else. Oth­er­wise it will drag down every oth­er part of your life, and con­tin­ue to do so…..!! Do you want that.
• If you choose to do nothing..then noth­ing will change. Sim­ple real­ly. Also, ter­ri­fy­ing. Do you real­ly want to keep being stuck with this shit for the next……
• You actu­al­ly are a real­ly nice per­son and have lots of peo­ple who like and care about you, includ­ing me. You real­ly need to let those peo­ple sup­port you, help you, care about you, but also to know the real you, warts and all. Do you real­ly think it will all be lost if you open your­self up.
• You need to be real­ly care­ful who you allow to offer help. Most peo­ple have thoughts and opin­ions about every­thing and there are lots of very dubi­ous ther­a­pists out there, maybe even appar­ent­ly well qual­i­fied ones who have only lim­it­ed knowl­edge and skills. And friends who help..well they just tend to tell you you’re ok, and won­der­ful as you are. If you believed that…really believed that, I wouldn’t be typ­ing this.
• You already know that you’re not right. It’s not an attack or crit­i­cism to say that, you know it already. It’s a bit like read­ing that book. Once you know some­thing, you can’t unknow it. You can choose to ignore it, or to do some­thing about it.

I like you, and care about you. The fact that things aren’t right with you leapt off the page every time you fin­ished things with me, every one of which was done bad­ly, and appeared to be trig­gered by some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’m sor­ry we can’t have a relationship…because we can’t. But I can help you to try to become some­thing dif­fer­ent, and hope­ful­ly a bet­ter, hap­pi­er per­son..

Or we can just meet up for the occa­sion­al cof­fee, and you can tell me about the nice walks you’ve been doing…..