HelenzArt-life-musings

Category: therapy

  • Well, here I am!

    The beginning of 2025, a new year, not a new me.  A different me? Perhaps yes. Physically, there has been a renewing and replacing of the biological cells, so yes, in a way. There’s certainly changes in perspectives.

    Integrations of that which has gone before. Mulling over ones personal history. Even considerations of ones parents’ histories, ancestral history too, if known or surmised. 

    Partaking in therapy with Chris was to be an adventuring into history.  Now history can be taken as that which has been recorded.  That often assumes that to be a written record.  Yet there is arguably an authors perspective in that. It is said that battles will only be written about by the Victor’s rather than the losers.  Not entirely true perhaps, but discernable differences in accounts may be seen.

    There is an accounting in the body, too, though.  To read ‘The body keeps the score’ by Bessel van de Kolk can be helpful when the time is right to find an understanding of this.  And what I was to bring to my therapy sessions was my inner coded history. Written indelibly with invisible ink, where the light needed to be shone on it in a particular way.  There were also multiple layers where the light needed to come from one way and then another. 

    That first discovery session was an easing into a new way, learning how to read myself. To not take others’ narrations and perspectives to adopt as my own. 

    Admittedly, after that first session  and the overwhelm of emotion, to then actual partake in a finding of a potential source for those in the second session was to teeter on the edge of considered madness.  Yet that strangeness of feeling that all ‘felt’ right and sound was to feel how sane it was. 

    Now, having arrived home, with a relief of spent emotions, to be with my hubby, I could be an observer for a while. Bring a distancing to that which I had experienced, or rather re-experienced with Chris.  To be honest, and in retrospect, I have always had an ability to compartmentalise, segregate, and isolate.  Part of my genetic makeup both known and unknown, its my innate survivor mode, as well as, perhaps, a cultivated coping mechanism. To feel deeply and compassionately, but without ‘falling apart’.  I can be moved to tears, emotionally engaged,  yet with an engaged resilience too. 

    OK, it still felt like a bomb had blasted my world apart. Not dissimilar to my grief at the loss of our son. There was also a disbelief that these things could have occurred and not been recalled at the surface of memory. Yet, in that observational space where I could monitor that response, it felt an absolute truth of my experiencing.  Non deniability.  It actually made sense of other events.

    Yes, the questioning in and of myself was…  ‘Am I fantasising, or deluded, or insane?’ And I kept coming back to the absolute certainty of ‘this happened to me’. 

    As the following day dawned, I had things, well, images and suggestions of happenings,  arise in my mind.  Not thoughts as much as feelings. Echoes of events and occurrences that did add to actual thinking of ‘I’m going insane’ yet these too were simply those encoded writings held deep within. Held within my subconscious, in the phenomena of being a bodied person. 

    These etched moments were to be followed as I continued into finding me and another session with Chris.

  • Finding Courage.

    The Latin root of courage is ‘cor’, the heart, the core or centre of what we are. That centre of feeling. Where we may feel fear and love and hope . To take courage to face our fears with love and hope that things will be OK. They will be OK yet not necessarily in the way we anticipate.

    So if it’s ‘cor’ for the heart, is it ‘rage’ too? Perhaps not in an anger sense but yes, to heightened emotion, a vehemence of passion or desire. An intensity to bring about change.

    Intent…. A focussing in on, paying attention.

    I have waited for this intensity of gaze, a focus of courage to write of my experiences with myself in therapy.

    My post of the 20th of June, covers my reasoning of finding a hypnotherapist. Of how I found myself in floods of tears. Of my intent to continue a journey, step by step. A journey that began decades ago, even life times ago though I didn’t know that at the time. A journey that began with death. That of my son, Gavin. Mine too, in more ways than one.

    So from one visit I went from feeling positive about changes to feeling utterly bemused, confused, bereft and all at sea.

    I arranged to have second visit to see the hypnotherapist, Chris, who was to become my way marker.

    The appointment was for a week later, yet what was I ‘to do’ in those intervening days. Chris advised simply sitting with what ever came up! I had always been able to sit for hours and read, watch TV, but might this be hard to do?

    When Gavin died, I learned how to sit and feel, actions for when I felt that welling up would be to pause what I was doing, find a comfortable place to rest, and let the tears flow. Sometimes I would look through the condolence cards and letters received from people who knew him. A freeing and expressing of my grief of loss and the other emotions that surround that. Yet that had a knowable cause, a rooted source, a physicality of a reason. A logical response to a circumstance.

    This depth of emotion, which felt of overwhelming sadness seemingly had no source. No seeable, no logically on the surface of knowing, root cause. It’s scary to feel such extreme emotion and not have any, ‘in the head’ reasoning for it. It was deep within and intent on coming out. The force of releasing through tears made sitting with it easy. In part perhaps by making the choice to carry on a discovery voyage, was a surrendering of control. I didn’t know where I would go, yet I intuitively felt it was time to go. I would simply sit and weep. I didn’t or rather couldn’t read, the same paragraph would be returned to as sight blurred, eyes ached from welling tears. Just so sad…. as if I was crying for all the world. I could still pull myself together, put it aside, be with company, my husband and family. Smile and laugh as usual, yet beneath, when in solitude, I would simply sink into an ocean of sadness.

    Solitude was key for me. It all felt very, very personal and I didn’t require pity nor to feel judged. Yes, I did tell my hubby that I was going to see Chris again and that smoking wasn’t simply a habit to be easily cast aside like an old sock. That there were deeper roots to the need. Which I don’t think he was particularly surprised at though what else he thought isn’t for me to guess at. Like many people without an addiction it’s often hard to understand a compulsive need.

    Over a number of days the sitting continued though the weeping subsided. I would watch the world around me, something I have always done. Marvel at the trees as I have always done and drift. Mind of nothing in particular, just sorrow. Then something might sift up, a ghosting of a memory from childhood not specific. Only a hint of where this pain may arise from. My mother kept coming to mind.

    I will mention that my Mother left when I was in my teens with never a birthday card, nor a gift at Christmas. To be honest I have never knowingly mourned her departure. Not cried at her leaving. I was always closer to my Dad so never upper consciously considered or admitted to feeling abandoned. I don’t recall even asking why or where she had gone, and my dad never offered any reasoning voluntarily. That it shaped some behaviours in me is certain. That yearning to be loved, or at least wanted for something, turning to promiscuity in an effort to find an embrace. She did reappear from her self imposed anonymity when her sister traced her down as their mother was dying. I allowed a contact for the sake of my then only child, for her to have a grandmother, the caveat being that she was not a mother for me, as she gave up that right when she vanished. Occasional visits happened over the years til she died in her early 60’s. No sorrow then either, just the death of someone I knew. We mutually stayed at arms length, no warmth or affection kindled on my part.

    Was there more to my wariness of contact with her? Was there an underlying relief to her going that made me so sanguine to her departure back then. I didn’t rightly know but the seeds were being sown.

    Extreme emotional out pouring can only last for so long, whether we understand a reason for them or not. By the end of the week I was utterly spent. There was a suspicion that my life would once again be turned upside down yet I felt that this was absolutely necessary to bring about an inner sense of peace.

    I was ready to step into my next session with Chris. I had found my courage to face what was asking to be faced. Just as I have found my courage to write about my experiences.

    Looking beyond

  • I Take a Deep Breath.

    So the wanting to stop smoking is a by me, for me. In the past it’s always been tried for the sake of others. That wasn’t wrong it was simply perhaps not heart felt enough. I have tried gums and patches. Herbal cigarette substitutes and vapes not like the real thing and I crave the real thing. It was a deep need that isn’t really rational when, as a well informed and intelligent woman, I know the harm it can do to my body and to others around me. I can visualise the money going up in smoke but that makes no difference to the drive to smoke. I wanted a quick fix, little effort required. Find a hypnotist in the hope and expectation that with a seeming magic wand and an ‘abra cadabra’ they would make that drive disappear. Vanish in the proverbial puff of smoke! An ‘on stage’ like hypnotic implanted suggestion to be averse to cigarettes. A Derran Brown type that would click their fingers and ‘ta dah’ it’s gone. I’m sure there are those around, a friend of mine did that decades ago. One session and a tape to reinforce that if needed.

    It took a lot of courage to even dial the number for the researched and chosen Hypnotherapist. Even more to accept an appointment, then, at the appointed time, to climb the stairs to his office. I didn’t know what to expect but I walked in and felt at ease, most of me wanted to be there. To make changes to how I was. The man I met was calm and friendly, non clinical and although I know they are likely to develop skills to put people at ease this was all so comfortable. With little prompting I began setting out the where’s of when I started smoking. Accessing those known ‘facts’ of my life. He talked me through the process and took me on my first journey to meeting me. I recall revisiting that 8 year old who made a choice with what she thought she knew. Brought to see an alternative of how life would look without the smoking. Though I don’t recall all the session, I walked out of there and felt invincible. This was it, I was no longer going to be a smoker. No urge to light up, buoyant in step. That evening no drive to smoke, no antsy feeling. He did it. I seemed to have got what I wanted.

    The next morning I was in floods of tears. Totally bewildered about what was happening to me. That was scary. I was awash in emotion that seemingly had no focus. I was just adrift in an ocean of nothing that I could, nor still can, give words to. I called Chris, the hypnotherapist, and asked what was all this about. He said that in all likelihood there was a lot more to the need to smoke than I had ever assumed. That it wasn’t simply a ‘habit’ to be changed. This was my next choice, and it was a no brainer. I was going to peep into the crack and see what was there. An appointment was made for a week later and in the intervening days see what arose.

    I lit up a cigarette after the phone call, it’s a soother, and a deeply rooted identifier, and although it was a key to suppression it was also going to be a key to opening too. Life’s full of paradoxes. I seemingly knew I was going to radically change and that was going to rock the foundations of my relationships. Relationships with me and with those around me. As both me, and they, were going to have to get used to the shifts, it could make the transitions easier if somethings were obviously the same.

    Perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t foresee the pain that this was going to bring. Though with the seeing that I now have, deep within it was known. I was more than ready to face the intensity of feeling that meeting my past would raise, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the invitation, and I wouldn’t have done it. I would have been able to continue in a denial that anything had ever been other than I knew on the surface.

    So though I didn’t initially get what I wanted, which was to stop smoking, I got what I innately needed. A crack in the shell, a ladder into the void. Wings to lift me up.

    So what arose in those intervening days will be in my next post, which, now I’ve found the will to write of my experiences again, shouldn’t be as long to wait for.