(The trigger box below hides a brief mention of the effects of physical assault.)


Meandering session today, began by telling R about my first blog post going live with a typo, before admitting that I didn’t know why I had brought that up. R wondered whether I felt like it might not have happened if I hadn’t been so consumed.

‘I remember, was it an infection in your thumb? You wondered how you didn’t notice.’
‘Yes. It’s been a week of lots of feelings without being able to explain them. I don’t feel like I deal with big emotions well…if that makes any sense.’

‘It makes sense – if I don’t understand, I can ask for clarification.’
I mentioned that we had planned to bring the collage back in, and handed it to her with two fingers. She immediately picked up on it.
‘There’s a slight reluctance there. Every time you hand me a collage or something you have written. These are the things you find difficult to verbalise.’
‘I wish I could verbalise them, but I feel as though verbalising them would cross a line, and I am not sure how I would handle that.’

I continued. ‘This collage expresses my feelings around the triggering experience at pottery, but also…’

‘But also around…’

‘Around our break? I can see that is difficult for you to say.’

R mentioned that she had done some work around naming emotions before. I said that I felt frustrated by the wider experience.

‘What do you mean by “the wider experience”?’
‘Even in the language I am using, I am trying to distance myself. The critic tells me it doesn’t matter, but if it didn’t matter, we would not be here.’
‘You ignored my question then. You don’t have to answer, but I asked what you meant by ‘the wider experience.’

‘The…no, that is the wrong word. The betrayal by those people.’

‘That is what you mean when you say “the wider experience”?’

‘Yes, I feel as though I could have prevented it, but I asked them not to send the photos, and they did.’
‘So if you had intervened earlier, do you think it would have made a difference?’

‘No, but the photos don’t matter. It’s January 2011 that matters. I think I could live with the anniversary, but being submerged against my will every night is draining, it’s damaging.’

‘You described before, being on edge, waiting for the next catastrophe.’

‘Bringing the collage back in – fear and emotional pain are not good places to live.’
‘Do you feel a disconnect from your emotions?’

‘I still feel wounded by what happened. With Chris, it was emotional pain…not totally, that sounds terrible.’

‘I didn’t experience it as sounding terrible.’

‘There were periods of…anguish is the word that first comes to mind.’

‘Mmm…’

‘It was coming to an end, coming to an end, coming to an end, and then it was over…or just beginning, I am not sure which.’

‘With the other experience, I had spent two weeks trying to get hold of someone, already knowing that something terrible had happened. It was a constant ‘will she make it, won’t she…’ at times ‘Do I even care?’ But I am a caring human being, and I cannot turn compassion off.’


‘What the **** would they expect me to do with that information? They didn’t give a damn about the impact it would have on me.’
‘Is that what hurts the most? Is it less about the actions and more the emotional impact? It could be both.’

‘It’s both. Without the actions, there is no emotional impact. Because it was first thing in the morning, I didn’t have the opportunity to process it. It would have been enough to say ‘It’s over’, without the detail.


'I grieve that I didn't intervene sooner.'
'I grieve that I wasn't in a position to assert my boundaries.'
'I grieve that I relive it every sodding night.'

In future sessions, I hope to explore the detail without my filter.