Today’s session is hard to put into words. Before she arrived, I was thinking about how work is the only place I currently feel safe. R knocked on the door, and I took a deep breath to steady myself before answering.

As we sat down, she asked whether I was OK, and I burst into tears. ‘I feel like I want to be close to you today, so I can’t lose you again.’ She moved quickly to sit on the floor next to me, and took hold of my hands.

‘Do you want a hug?’

I could not speak, but must have made a noise that sounded affirmative.

‘It’s OK, Lost. Let it out…you’re safe.’

I cried for what felt like a long time, and then said ‘Things came to a head this week’, before talking about my friend leaving, Mum’s back and everything happening at once.

‘I just want to feel safe in my own mind, and that doesn’t seem to be possible!’

‘Do you want a tissue?’ R asked whether I wanted to do some deep breathing, and then offered to do it with me. ‘Just take some nice little deep breaths….’

R asked a number of questions about Mum’s back, and I said that I appreciated Mum being transparent with me.

‘But there’s nothing I can do to make this go away!’

‘This all happened this week?’

‘Monday. I got a message on social media from somebody I’ve considered a dear friend for the last five years…Background. At last year’s Christmas gathering with friends, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. I don’t want to do the maths, because when I think about how long it has been since I attended the music sessions, it’s frightening. I didn’t tell him that I was going to the party, because I wanted it to be a surprise. He said it made his evening, and then dropped it into the conversation that he and his family might be leaving the county next year. I didn’t hear from him for a while, and then got that message on Monday where he apologised for not seeing me before he went, ‘but in the scheme of things all good relationships we form are as valuable as they ever were at any given point.’ I think he was trying to get himself off the hook.’

‘That doesn’t sound like it was done in the kindest of ways.’
‘No. I had hoped that when I felt strong enough, or well enough…”Yes” to return to the music events that there would be that extra support.’

‘He represents safety.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yes.’
‘The word abandonment comes up for me.’

R asked how I was feeling at that moment.

‘Frustrated, fragile and defeated.’
‘I get that from you.’
‘I don’t want to be this fragile creature.’
‘And yet you showed fragility today.’

We talked about some of the complications regarding Open Studios and how I don’t really want to be there at the moment, but feel like I have to.

‘Is that for you, or for someone else?’
‘For Mum.’

It became very difficult to talk after that, as I was fighting another wave.

‘I’m fighting another wave of whatever just happened.’
‘Let it out if you need to.’
R asked how I was feeling, and I offered ‘ashamed’ and ‘guilty’.

‘Ashamed? Because you cried?’
‘Yes. My shoulders are burning. The thing is, it never feels finished.’
‘It sounds as though you expect some kind of release…”Right, I’ve cried, so I’m going to feel better now.”’
‘Exactly. During the break, the thought came to me clearly several times…”I want to be with my emotions, and I simultaneously want to climb out of my own skin.”’

‘I didn’t bring my resource, but we talked last time about the head, or however you want to put it, being full, and it is good to turn on the tap and let some out. You sound as though you have exhausted all of your coping mechanisms…and I feel like I’m holding on to you pretty tight at the moment.’
We talked about how I spend so much energy trying to deal with things in the past that there is little to spare for anything that might go wrong in the present. The critic was chewing me out at this point, but I did my damnedest to ignore it.

I looked for a pen as I wanted to draw something. She offered me hers, and I drew a basic image.

‘Freehand circle, not bad.’

We discussed the connotations of what I had drawn, and R suggested that rather than keeping emotion on the outside, I might allow it to come a little closer.

‘I understand why I cannot allow myself to feel the full extent of it, but I won’t even allow myself to touch the emotion of it.’
I was silent for a little while, and then said ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You are sorry to me?’
‘Yes. I was not expecting to have an outburst today.’
‘If you break it down, when somebody says they are sorry, it implies that they have done something wrong or hurt somebody. All you have done is trust me and feel safe.’

‘Yes.’

‘I am not saying that I don’t accept your apology. Apology accepted, but I actually take it as a compliment that you felt safe enough to cry with me. During all the time we have been working together, and despite the amount we have talked about it, I never thought that you would. As a counsellor, I have chosen this line of work, and if everyone apologised every time they got angry or cried, or expressed emotion…’

She said that she sensed regret, and although she obviously cannot control my emotional responses, she hopes that I will not beat myself up for crying.
She checked that I felt OK to end the session there, and invited me to email if I needed to check in. I said that I would probably go and have a lie down.

‘It felt strange sitting on the floor, but it felt right. You could have told me to sit properly.’
‘I appreciated the closeness.’