Gratitude for Six Years

I am aware of the pull I have, when I post, to feel like I need to say something inspired.   But in true  anti-guru form, I just want to write from the heart, from vulnerability, from rawness.  In the last three months I have left my therapist of six and a half years.  Money and desire to work in new ways were the driving forces but I think there were other driving forces there too.  Our relationship will eventually, I think, transition into something different once we have surpassed the two year ethical threshold for a change in relationship-probably a more deliberate apprenticeship.  It feels organic.  I am not waiting on her doorstep - no part of me hanging on.  Just feels like the truth of what may be.  I see the ways we are different and well...why am I writing all of this?

I am writing all of this because I had my last session with her today.  I feel heavy hearted but not heartache.  I feel the goodbye.  The session was half consultation on some of my client work and half good bye.  But I wanted to write about our work because to not save space for her on the this blog would seem like a shocking miss- a kind of enactment in and of itself. 

First off, at the end of our relationship, she dropped me.  She dropped me in the way every good therapist needs to drop their client so the client can a) test their skill b) feel how they have and have not grown c) test the relationship they have inside to them self and d) test the relationship with the therapist.  After all, therapists are human too and if we are lucky we find one that has just the right mix of holding us, dropping us, skillful repair, and skillful confrontation so our own wounded sense of self becomes more whole. 

What do I mean by whole?  Whole: the ability to own all our holes with a calm nervous system, self compassion, acceptance and humor.  Sometimes holding holes means having skills for holding our self, sometimes holding holes means having skills for reaching out, sometimes holding holes means having skills for boundary and limit setting, sometimes holding holes mean noticing where there are no holes, and sometimes holding holes means seeing, honoring, and accepting the holes in others - all of this done without having to fill in any holes inside of me or inside of you.  There is this sweet little book I have called The Prayer Tree.  I want to share a sweet poem that speaks to the simplicity of being with holes.  It goes like this;

When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open

Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.

Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring

I  might add to this poem the relational piece to read something like this:

And let trusted souls see it
Together vulnerable and courageous
To walk through not around
Without needing you to be it

Sweet eh?  The second thing that happened in the course of my long relationship with this sweet human soul of a therapist is I learned a lot, enacted a lot, was held figuratively and literally and healed a lot.  Today I was confronted and repaired with.  Sweet confrontation: I was dropping myself.  In Freudian terms I was confronted with my own compulsion to repeatedly grease people's hands up with baby oil or seek out people with well oiled hands and then leap my naked body wiggling into their arms.  I really got to own how I actively grease people up today in our closing session.  Moreover, what I communicate in the greasing process to that friend is "You don't matter."  A heartfelt relationship I trash because the fighty part is determined to not feel every be vulnerable again.  So "go fuck yourself" is her stance to the world.  Hers, mind you, not mine.  THUD.  Feel that one in my gut.  Yep.  I participate.   I have known that for some time but today, for the first time, I didn’t feel ashamed of it.  I just accepted it.  Hmmm…and I don't want to do that anymore. 

Sucks that it took so long as I am sure I have been confronted many times by many others on this topic but these ah hah's really do need the right ingredients in the soup (timing, internal resources, and relationship) for it to fully be ingested. (Hence the limits of cognitive behavioral therapy).  Well the soup is in, I am full bellied and as I sat in my car writing notes after my session I asked myself, "well how do I stop greasing people up to drop me and stop dropping myself?"

There were, of course, a lot of brainy responses I could make here, but you could go get a good self help book for those.  The answer for me was I had to absolutely hold this fighty part of me rather than hate her or pretend she doesn't exist.  She is this very angry bitter girl who in her effort to protect me from the more vulnerable feelings keeps callous building by dropping and being dropped.  She wants to keep me callous stiff and impenetrable.   Wow!  Yep.   I have to help this poor kid out.  She is like a feral cat.   Here I am again being invited to actively hold such an insidious creature.  I get her twisted goal to help but fuck, really, creating more suffering to prevent suffering? What a misguided strategy.  Poor thing! 

I wasn’t sure, as I sat there in my car, if I knew how to hold such an angry, temperamental, impenetrable child.  And here is where mothering comes in.  Immediately an image of my oldest son’s angry face flashed into my mind and several memories where I DID have the capacity to hold his anger with a great deal of skill, compassion and respect.  “Oh”, I thought, “I can do this.”   I am reminded again of the priveledge of parenting blog post about the profound teacher parenting is.  Thanks son!  And I am also aware that as I get better had holding this part of me, I will also get even MORE skillful at holding him so he doesn’t feel burdened to squish his anger.
In the moment, I feel shame free.  Just honest and accepting.  This is what it is.  I am doing my best.

To my old therapist, deep love and gratitude for being one of my trusted souls!  You matter to me, deeply.

And let trusted souls see it
Together vulnerable and courageous
To walk through not around
Without needing you to be it