Sally continued taking sessions with me, still wearing her Covid mask, her face still largely unreadable. I relied on her words, her body language and her eyes. ( I have trained myself, since childhood, to read body language. It’s a psychological defense mechanism and a part of my hypervigilance born out a response to early trauma ). To overcome this lack of connection with Sally I had clipped two photos of her found on the internet and stored on my laptop. As previously mentioned, I had investigated Sally from the outset, checking her credentials and professional experience, something I do with every healthcare professional that I meet for the first time. I discovered that she had her own private practice outside of the NHS and advertised her services as an art therapist on the internet. Her website included all her relevant professional details, a photos of her house and another of herself. I clipped that photo of her and kept it on my laptop. I also discovered Sally through social media, including Facebook. Her profile on Facebook, along with her posts and photos were available to the public. I clipped a second photo of her and kept that one, also on my laptop.

There was one time when Sally did start a session with me, sans mask. I remember my heart jumped with joy at seeing her face and I couldn’t hold on to my emotion for long. When I shared my elation at seeing her face again she quickly left the room. My heart sank into sadness when she returned, masked. I later entertained the idea that she had let the mask slip deliberately.

I don’t remember when it was that I shared my suicide fantasy with her. I have suffered from suicidal ideation through much of my life. I made her aware that I had seen a previous psychotherapist just a few years earlier due to suicidal thoughts. I had never actually made any serious plans to take my own life but recognized the increasing risk. I spoke at some length about the Kielder Forest in Northumberland and my suicide fantasy which involved trekking around the 250 kms plantation until I succumbed to dehydration and died peacefully under a tree. Sally told me that she knew Kielder Forest and I was left with the impression that she had vacationed there or maybe family or friends lived near that neck of the woods. The idealised version of Sally grew in my imagination as a veritable earth goddess, walking barefoot under soughing trees, beating heart in time with beating shamanic drums.

The Kielder Forest was one of many points of commonality between us. We shared an obvious interest in art which went beyond the superficial level. Sally loved working with Pentel brush pens, as do I and she even recognized pale imitations of Calvin and Hobbes in some of my therapy drawings. It was our shared interests in spiritual and esoteric matters where the commonalities were most interesting. As an example, Sally has a profound interest in altered conciousness and rituals for communicating with healing spirits. We traded ideas. One moment she would speak glowingly about the Dutch motivational speaker, Wim Hof or elaborate on the concept of soul splitting, the next moment I would talk about Hank Wesselman, the American anthropologist and his connection with a Hawaiian shaman from the future called Nainoa. Such singularly shared interests helped build the idea within my head that Sally and I were kindred souls. It might seem naively romantic to the reader but this is an idea that I firmly believe in, even now, despite the obvious contradictions.

Those contradictions were obvious. My therapy with Sally was time limited as Meg was approaching her 18th birthday and would be discharged from CAMHS shortly after. The concept of ending my therapeutic relationship with Sally became ever more distressing for me. During one session near to the end I was absolutely distraught and begged her not to go, sobbing uncontrollably my childhood abandonment wound raw and exposed. I vividly remember that moment, my exhortations snatched between gasps for air, 'Don't go! Don't go, Sally! Please, don't go! Not yet! Not now! Please, don't go!' And yet, even at my lowest she seemed disconnected, speaking almost as though talking into a Dictaphone, describing my anguish as she watched it, rising and falling, in peaks and troughs. 'Ah! It comes in waves', she said to herself, describing my emotion. And in that moment there was no connection. I felt untethered, my imaginary rope to her lifeless and slack. I felt momentarily abandoned by her. Later, when I had calmed down, I made allowances for her. In my mind I always seemed to make allowances for her. She had, after all, once told me that my case was big and that she was going to write a professional academic paper on me. It made me very happy to hear how important our work was. I was pleased that I could be of service to her, helping her with her academic ambitions and further idealizing her. This maladaptive behavior must have sat better within the confines of my damaged estimation of myself because that I was giving something back to her, repaying her attention towards me with a type of psychological quid pro quo.

The ending of our work together weighed heavily on my mind. It felt that I was soon to be cast into the wilderness and I knew I wasn’t ready. I told Sally that I was going to have trouble letting go of her. She was probably inconvenienced by this revelation as her frustrations with me escalated. At one time she asked me, ‘Am I going to have to worry about you?’ That made me feel like I had become a burden to her and I was ashamed of myself. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘ You won’t have to worry about me.’

Later she changed tack and for a moment, adopted her unsympathetic persona, telling me, essentially, to man-up ( my hyphenated words, not hers ). I don’t remember her exact words but the advice  she gave was stoic and hard around the edges. With a clearly implied reference to my childhood traumas she told me that bad things happen to everyone and that I needed to get it together. I thought, charitably at the time, that she was dispensing a kind of tough love. It didn’t occur to me until much, much later that she might have been trying to patch me up, psychologically-speaking, with a quick but temporary fix and so give enough space between my vulnerability and her responsibility and so defend herself from future professional criticism. Whatever her true intention was, those words were jarring and contributed to my instability.

During another later session Sally seemed to change her mind, again. She told me that she had identified at least two completely new psychological aspects about me that she felt were important to interrogate before our work was complete. I was truly shocked. Why would she even entertain the idea of unpacking new psychological traumas when we hadn’t properly contained the traumas already unpacked. It felt to me like we had emptied out suitcase after suitcase of truly appalling historical abuse and neglect and the contents were strewn haphazardly and disheveled across all three lanes of a busy motorway. Surely Sally should have known just how unwise her request really was? We had maybe, two, maybe three sessions left before the end of the work together and yet here she was, asking me to agree to more invasive psychology. I actually surprised myself by saying ‘No!’ I actually said ‘No!’ to Sally Mungall.

It was, however, far too late for me. We were about to enter the final stages of our work together and real, life-threatening catastrophe was just around the corner.