A Theory of Everything # 8 'the Aura of Disgust'

It wasn’t until long after the ‘art therapy’ sessions had ended that I truly understand that I had been abused by Sally Mungall.

I arrived at this conclusion during my SEVENTY-TWO sessions at Basingstoke Counselling Services with psychotherapist, Isobel Brooks and then much later following extended sessions with Mid-North Hants Psychological Services Cognitive Analytical Therapist, Jackie Preston.

Incredibly, Sally Mungall herself actually broached the subject of abuse during ‘art therapy’. During one particular session, she referenced a discussion raised in her own ‘supervision’.

Supervision is

"A specialised form of mentoring provided for practitioners responsible for undertaking challenging work with people. Supervision is provided to ensure standards, enhance quality, advance learning, stimulate creativity, and support the sustainability and resilience of the work being undertaken."

'Supervision offers you a reflective space in which to develop practice and so benefits client safety. All aspects of your practice should be open to supervision.' - https://www.bacp.co.uk/membership/registered-membership/guide-to-supervision/

Sally Mungall actually ‘took me’ to her own supervision many times as evidenced in medical notes She obviously found the work with me to be extremely challenging. I would go further and speculate Sally Mungal was having difficulty in managing her own counter-transference.

Sally Mungall had been prompted in ‘supervision’ to raise the question of abuse directly with me. She asked me, directly, if I felt like I was being abused in therapy.

I have also come to understand, mostly through my later work with an NHS trauma therapist, Clara Long, that I was actually ‘trauma-bonding’ with Sally Mungall during ‘art therapy’.  A trauma bond is usually defined as a strong attachment to someone who causes mental, physical, or sexual harm in a relationship. It is interesting to note that a victim of trauma-bonding’ typically defends the behaviour of their abuser. I would end up defending Sally Mungall to my own disadvantage through much of 2022 and I will come back to this in greater detail later. When she asked me if I felt like I was being abused in therapy, I replied, with little thought, that I did not. I felt no more inclined to face the truth than any other abuse victim who has also fallen into the ‘trauma bond’ trap.

I have already written about some of the ways that I was abused by Sally Mungall. I have included a few anecdotes in early chapters found here within the pages of this blog https://www.fourandtwentydeadcrows.com/post/four-and-twenty-dead-crows-table-of-contents .

One of the most egregious examples of that abuse happened at around the sixth session of ‘art therapy’. She told me that there was an ‘aura of disgust’ about me that had been so strong in the early sessions that when she went home she would need to shower herself off immediately to feel clean. ( My sessions with Sally Mungall were her last appointment every Thursday afternoon. ) I was horrified at what she had to say, imagining her desperate to say goodbye at the end of each session so that she could rush home and wash herself of me. She assured me that the aura of disgust was not as bad but it left me in no doubt that she was still needing to get herself clean again after each meeting. I felt dirty.

What did she actually mean by ‘aura of disgust’?

It was true that my hair was long and unkempt but I wasn’t actually dirty. I did have a skin cancer scare right at the onset of ‘art therapy’ but would ordinarily have expected sympathy and compassion as an appropriate response, especially from a healthcare professional.

Was there something else that Sally Mungall could see in me that was invisible to an untrained eye?

Or was it in the ‘art therapy’ drawings that I was making? Some of those drawings were really disgusting. I still have them sequestered in a large brown envelope, much like toxic waste in a rusty barrel, unseen by me for over four years. Those awful drawings are revelations of the very worst aspects of my childhood and Sally Mungall coaxed them out like rats from a damp and noisome cellar.

In ‘art therapy’ I was the embodied child, reliving the abuse.

The disgusting drawings that I made in ‘art therapy’ were expressions of emotional, physical and sexual abuse that had been inflicted upon me while I was a vulnerable child. Those disgusting drawings were NOT evidence of wrongdoing, bad behaviour or any deviancy on my part when I was a very young boy.

But here's the thing. She hadn't referred to the art therapy drawings. Sally Mungall had referred to an 'aura' of disgust, an atmosphere, an air or quality about me, around my physical person. She was telling me that she thought I, the physical person, had an atmosphere of disgust about me. She was telling me that I was disgusting.

Sally Mungall told me that after ‘art therapy’ sessions she needed to shower herself clean. She made no attempt to differentiate between the awful acts of my childhood abusers and me, the abused. Why would a psychotherapist blur those boundaries? I believe it was a calculated and deliberate attack.

This is VICTIM BLAMING and a deliberate act of psychological abuse.

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm done to them.

I believe that Sally Mungall did this deliberately, in a calculated attempt at ‘displacement of attribution’, the unacceptable characteristic that Sally Mungall perceived in herself that she wanted to offload onto me. I believe that the unacceptable characteristic that Sally Mungall perceived in herself was ‘disgust’, not directly at me or even what had happened to me, but what had happened to her. Something about me triggered a counter-transference reaction in Sally Mungall, an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious or something considered offensive, distasteful or unpleasant that belonged to Sally Mungall’s past.

Do people with unhealed emotional wounds unwittingly repeat harmful patterns?

Do hurt people hurt? I believe so. A part of Sally Mungall's motivation was an attempt at 'displacement of attribution'. Another part of her motivation was pure revenge.

The really extraordinary thing about these parts of my theory of everything is the insight gained into my relationship with my own mother. I will unpack this in my next post.