The sessions became exponentially more harrowing as art therapy proceeded. I believed the purpose of the sessions was to help me understand my relationship with my daughter and to investigate the possibility that intergenerational trauma was being inadvertently passed on to Meg. I felt it was an absolute necessity to face this psychological journey with tenacity and courage. I found myself agreeing with Sally that being open, honest and vulnerable was the best way to serve Meg and so I handed over responsibility to the therapist and trusted her, wholeheartedly, with my mental health and psychological safety.

I took to the psychodynamic aspect of the therapy immediately. The art followed less easily and I was more or less reticent in explaining my reluctance to draw. Sally mediated by giving me a cheap sketch book to take home, maybe hoping that a different environment and time to reflect might soften me. ( She was quite keen for me to be ‘soft’). The talk overflowed and quickly focused upon my childhood. I spoke at some length about my parents, focusing on their own individual stories of trauma and my relationship with both, though particularly with respect to my mother. ( I don’t know how much I should write about my mother as she passed away in December 2023 and so isn’t here to defend herself. Suffice to say my relationship with her was fractious at best. ) Sally seized upon the account of this far from perfect mother son relationship and made suggestions that I probably hated women. I objected. I love women. In fact I have enough insight about myself to know that I idealise women. She pushed back against my denial which, at the time, annoyed me. I think I might have reminded her that I was the single dad and main carer to Meg and was demonstrating, quite clearly, my love and devotion to a young woman. Sally seemed almost disappointed that she hadn’t secured an admission of misogyny and that left a lasting impression on me. I will return to this in a much later post and posit a theory, substantiated by evidence centred around Sally’s own counter-transference, as to why she pressed so heavily with her opinion.

Art therapy always rendered me distraught and emotionally unstable. At times I was sobbing uncontrollably, at other times I could barely breathe. I was always vulnerable, often scared and sometimes even terrified. I recounted my childhood experiences, sometimes reverting to a five year old boy, reliving historic abuse and neglect, desperate to flee, to run or to cower away in the corner of the room.

And all the while Sally was interchangeable in her attitude towards me. During sessions she would validate my bravery with kind motherly words and teach me how to ground myself or remind me to breathe. During other sessions she was less kind and sometimes she was even cruel, indifferent or outright abusive. At one point she expressed concern for my welfare and questioned me about the intensity of the sessions. Indeed, one that particular occasion, she told me that she felt that she WAS abusing me and asked for my opinion. I dismissed her concerns and urged her to press on. The people-pleaser, or I should say more specifically, the woman-pleaser part of my persona overruled common sense. I have come to understand, mostly through my later work with an NHS trauma therapist, that I was actually ‘trauma-bonding’ with Sally Mungall. It has become my heartfelt contention that Sally’s own ‘counter-transference’ played it’s part in the theraputic relationship. Sally would sometimes become the embodied abuser and I the compliant victim. I desperately needed to be ‘seen’ and the attention, even when it was abusive, was welcomed by me. She regularly become frustrated with me, subtle micro-aggressions punctuated the proceedings by way of tuts, groans and, distressingly, through what I now understand to be passive aggression or outright verbal abuse.

Sally saw the self-contempt, self-loathing and disgust imbedded deep within me. She once asked me ‘Can I tell you something?’ Why do people ask that question? Who ever replies, ‘No’? I never say, ‘No!’ ‘Yes!’ I replied. ’Tell me anything you want.’ What Sally had to say was received by me with quiet incredulity. She told me to 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 were Sally’s last appointment every Thursday afternoon. ) I was horrified, 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 have weaponsied those words against myself ever since.

This was especially horrifying as I had developed romantic feelings towards her and had already told her that I loved her. How awful it was to love someone who expressed repulsion in return. She mattered but I was anti-matter. She had replied that she would ‘allow it’, allow my heartfelt declaration of love. I now think  that she was actually tolerating my feelings towards her while managing her feelings of disgust. That ‘aura of disgust comes from my childhood. It is interchangeable with unlovable, unclean, contaminated, all words that sum up how I feel about myself deep down inside. I have related Sally’s words to other therapists since then and all have either failed to disguise their disapproval or have criticized her explicitly.

The sessions continued and I was rendered increasing distressed. And the contradictions were confusing. I loved her but was, subconsciously, trauma bonding with her, falling into a relationship that I was all too familiar with. She would regularly get frustrated with me. One moment she seemed genuinely concerned and the next would say something crushing. I relished her attention and if that meant absorbing her ambivalence then that was okay. In reality this was a manifestation of attachment disorder, something that I was unaware of at the time. I will go into this in greater detail in later blog posts but in the meantime it is enough to say that an ‘attachment disorder’ is a term that describes disorders in social relationships arising the unavailability of normal socializing care and attention from primary caregivers in early childhood, usually parents. This manifestation of attachment disorder was being played out through transference and counter-transference within the therapeutic relationship with Sally.