Music has been of great comfort to me the past 11 years. “This love” by Sarah Brightman is a song which always makes me think of my psychologist who has just abandoned me. I listened to it after the day she held my hand as I lay on the floor of her office non-verbal and waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
“This love
This love is a strange love
A faded kind of day love
This love
This love
I think I’m gonna fall again
And even when you held my hand
It didn’t mean a thing
This love”
You hear all kinds of shit when you’re traumatised and grieving. My mum, while well-meaning, is not the most empathetic person. I think she thought it would be good for me to get out, so we met up today. We went for a walk, a stroll I can usually manage, but I was so weak today it felt like running a marathon. We then got some food and ate it in a park before heading home. In the car home she implied that I was choosing to be miserable, and was not making an effort to feel better, despite it taking everything I had left in me to go out. I would never have told her she’s choosing to be sad when she lost her parents, so I can’t believe she had the nerve to tell me something like this. My grief is disenfranchised; few people understand the depth of my feelings for and dependence on my psychologist. I have people tell me things like “you fall off your bike you get back on”. There is pressure all around us to move on after experiencing trauma.
“You ever love something so much you gotta have it, so you use it every day until you start to form a habit. Then before you knew what happened you were suddenly an addict that just wasted half their life and every dream they had was shattered.” Joe Nester, ‘Story of an addict’
My family and I have always jokingly called my psychologist “Gill the Pill”. It was only tonight that it dawned on me how scarily accurate this is. She did become a pill. A drug I was addicted to. She released all the feel good chemicals in my brain. Weekly sessions turned into twice weekly sessions. Still it wasn’t enough. I’d crash after every session. Then I got into the habit of emailing her multiple times a day. She stopped reading my emails but I still sent them. I became so caught up in the relationship it isolated me from the people who truly love me. It completely took over my life. Now I am in withdrawal, and I am desperate for a new drug. If I knew somebody who sold heroin I would get some. Apparently there is a man who lives near Mum’s place who is a drug dealer. He also has a gun. But I am so desperate for something to lift the pain that I’m considering knocking on his door and asking if he has any drugs.
Love and relationship addiction is a very real thing. It is not just like a drug addiction, it IS a drug addiction. The only difference is we cannot see the drugs… the oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and all the other chemicals that the relationship triggers in us.
I’m not sure at what point in our relationship it happened, but my whole world started to revolve around my psychologist. I’d buy new clothes and think “this will be nice to wear to my appointment”. That day she dropped the news she didn’t want to see me anymore I had gone to the optometrist to get new glasses which I mainly wanted to wear to our appointments. I have had trouble seeing her, both literally and figuratively. I didn’t know how much danger I was in. I didn’t know that she was a cunning wolf in disguise. Now I see her clearly, and I can’t believe I got sucked into the mirage once again. I blast Evanescence as I type this post.
“She never was and never will be. You don’t know how you’ve betrayed me. And somehow you’ve got everyone fooled.”
How can I trust myself and my judgement of people when I was so wrong about her? How could I not see through her façade? Even after a string of equally psychopathic mental health professionals, I was still blind. I thought that I had finally found “the one”.
“It never was and never will be. You’re not real and you can’t save me.”
She held my hand but it meant nothing. Everything was a performance. I was alone all along. Continue reading “Thoughts about narcissistic abuse”
When I sat across from my psychologist, in her office full of toys, I was not a 31-year-old woman. The person sitting there was a little child, and her psychologist was her mummy. Her psychologist was a safe base from which she could start to “wander”. This little girl suffered tremendously, but knowing her psychologist was there, she felt better able to endure these things.
When she heard her psychologist was leaving her, her world broke in two. She didn’t just lose a mother, she lost faith in all of humanity. It was like everyone was on one side and she was all alone on the other. She had that familiar feeling that she would have the survive on her own once again, even though she was so young. It was just her and the others who lived inside her head. She felt like drowning herself in the ocean that surrounded her island.
To all the psychologists who claim to be trauma experts and yet will put a child through this, shame on you. These children trusted you and they will never be the same.
“Nobody gives an answerI’m just asking why?Just tell me why?Why it has to be like this”
Enigma, “Why”
I usually like listening to sad songs on YouTube, but all my favourite songs are too triggering for me right now. Last night I had a break down listening to “True Colours” by Cyndi Lauper even. It was the part of the video which showed the little girl (who I assume was the younger version of Cyndi). I feel like that little part of me came out sometimes with my psychologist. I showed her my true colours, all of me, but instead of caring for these parts, she turned her back on them in the end. Then tonight I listened to “No More “I Love You’s“” by Annie Lennox. This was even worse. The tender music video shows Annie holding hands with the different characters. It reminded me of the times my psychologist held my hand, and how I feel this ending is all my fault because still, after all the care she showed me, I did not get better. I was the most unrewarding client she’s probably ever had. For a long time I’ve felt like all I really need is something very human: just to be held and touched. But there are only a few people I can really enjoy this with. For instance, I hate my family touching me, and I don’t like to be touched by most men. Most of the time touch is an emotionally empty experience for me. I long to be touched but I hate it too. But I had developed a very intense bond with my psychologist, and there was still so much more I felt we could do together, such as experimenting more with touch. Touch, when done right, allows us to leave survival mode, and in another time, and in another place, a little you is experiencing what it’s like to feel safe. I am deeply scarred by the way my psychologist drew me in and then spat me out. She said she was committed to me and that she thought it would be a shame to end our relationship as we had so much history together. I trusted her, and then she ruthlessly ends our relationship without giving me any say over the matter. There are no words for the pain and sense of betrayal I feel. I have had to take diazepam tonight as I’ve been so distressed by all this.
I can’t believe I’ve just had another screaming episode. I didn’t think I had it in me; I felt like I’d been run over by a truck most of the day. The nurse who was on earlier told me she would move me into an actual room today once the patient had left. It was a relief as I was just in a curtained area and could hear all the commotion in the ward. My disability support worker came to see me today. He sat in the chair by my bed while I lay in bed, all the life drained from me. We could barely hear each other speak as there was so much hustle and bustle. Finally we moved into the small courtyard and sat in two bean chairs while we waited for the room to be cleaned. I kept expecting a nurse to come out and tell me the room was ready, but no one did. Finally I went inside to ask about the room and found out it had been given to someone else. I couldn’t believe it. Everything was just too much. I felt like no one in the world gave a shit about me. I went back into the courtyard, only to find it wasn’t empty anymore and a few other people were out there. All I could see were blurry faceless figures as I have a vision problem. That was the point when I completely lost it. I felt suffocated, like I couldn’t get away from people. It all hit me like a lightening bolt. I stormed back into the ward cursing and then I began screaming. There was a leather armchair outside the room I was going to be moved to. I curled up on the chair facing the back and screamed and screamed. I just couldn’t cope. I was tired of people promising me things and then breaking their promise…. Promising me a room, promising to stick with me and then abandoning me. The nurse and my disability worker stood by me trying to get me into a room to have a chat. I continued screaming. Continue reading “Everything is too much”
I stare at a blank page not sure where to start this post. A page empty as my life now.
My psychologist of four years had been trying to organise a “support team” for me after watching me deteriorate. She spoke with my inpatient psychiatrist, to my NDIS support coordinator, to my physiotherapist. She had me and my family thinking how lucky I am to have such a caring, proactive psychologist. But she left out one minor detail: she wasn’t going to be part of this team. I’m not sure when exactly she decided this. But on Monday, at our “family planning session”, she dropped the bombshell on us. She told us I’ve got no where with her, am too unstable to work with and she wasn’t going to continue working with me unless I am better. She wanted to dump me in a Community Care Unit where I would live and have 24 hour support. Continue reading “Abandoned”
As I wrote in my video about ASD, Asperger’s is like being a selkie. I live in two worlds. I am most at home in the sea, but can also (though with great difficulty) live on the land with others. Continue reading “Irritated”
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