Today’s session was pretty gruelling. R started the call and explained that as today is her Internet switch over day, they had already switched it off, so she was using data. She hoped that the connection would be OK.
‘Deep breaths.’

‘I’m laughing because that was part of a conversation I had with my support worker yesterday. I said to her “Isn’t that all I have left?”’

‘How are you feeling in this moment?’ R asked.

‘When I emailed, I mentioned an upcoming trigger date, but didn’t say what it was.’
‘Remember, I don’t need to know every detail.’

‘Tomorrow…**** tenses, would be or is Chris’ birthday.’

R made a noise of understanding.

‘I shouldn’t feel like this.’

‘You shouldn’t? Who says?’
‘I don’t want to feel like this.’

‘Can you name the emotion you are feeling right now?’

I promptly dissolved, whilst trying to figure out how to put ‘I can’t outrun the sadness any longer’ into words.

‘I get the sense of complete overwhelm.’

‘I have never felt utterly defeated before.’ I continued to cry, and then asked ‘What is the point in me trying to compose myself?’

‘What is the point in you trying to compose yourself? You don’t have to hold it together for me.’

We talked about the developments of the last week in a work-related sense. I explained that I thought I would be teaching again in September, but now that is October, maybe, and still online.
‘It’s just hit me that as we get back to some kind of normality…Work, I’m no longer seeing you in person, I don’t know about classes. Everything you use to keep you on a level is distant. It is what it is at the moment, and all I can offer is this space. I am going to ask you a question – you don’t have to answer it now. It’s big, and ambiguous. What do you need? Not necessarily from me.’
‘It’s a two part question. What do I need, that I have access to?’

We had a conversation about reframing my process around crying, which I described as overwhelmingly negative.
R said she wasn’t sure how to do it, but perhaps through a visualisation.

‘There are a couple of months to go yet, but almost four years on from the cinema experience, I am struck by the fact that I am experiencing that on a near weekly basis. It was horrible, but I was able to put it away and move on.’
‘I hear pride in that, almost as if that is what you are supposed to do.’

‘In every other situation where I have wanted to cry, I have found myself saying ‘I can’t do that, so and so needs me.’

‘Now you have used up your capacity to do that, and you are left with your own stuff.’
R said that she had observed a change in me since lockdown.

‘Our relationship has become more real.’

‘I am glad you said that. It was on the tip of my tongue.’

We briefly talked about my experience of physical pain after crying. Broadly speaking, it’s normal – holding tension creates pain.
Then we did a breathing exercise, relaxing shoulders.

‘I am glad it went without saying this time.’
R asked me to pick a colour to breathe out some of the mess of emotion.

‘It might be too big to breathe it all away, but you can imagine wisps of smoke coming off it. Imagine it going away from you. It’s not going to hurt anyone else – the path is clear.’