Transcript: Episode 342
342. Un-Fawning
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I don’t know why therapy is such a disaster. And I cannot afford to pay someone to sit with me for an hour while I don't talk. I had things to talk about.
Last week my children were punks on their Chromebooks at school, and we got called to the Principal's office to talk to the police. I still don't know if that's like an automatic referral to Family Services and we're gonna see DHS show up, or if it's all settled and they just don't have Chromebooks anymore. Not all the children. Two punks in particular. They weren't trying to be naughty. It was developmental, and it was just the wrong time and the wrong place to be asking such questions. You know, elementary school and body parts and all. So obviously that's triggering, having to talk to the police and not knowing if family services are coming or not. And not knowing when we can just be safe without those kinds of things. Except I know the Principal and the police were trying to keep the children safe and I appreciate that. I could have talked about that for an hour.
I told her that I tried to reach out to my friends who know my previous Kelly because we've been doing better and felt more interactive and thought that maybe we could connect and see each other in person now that numbers are down. But both of them gave really vague answers. And so I don't know if they're just ghosting me and they're not really my friends, or if I just wasn't clear in what I wanted. Like, I literally don't have the skills to do friendship well. And I feel terrible because I do want friends and I'm not trying to be a bad friend. I could have talked about that. That would have been great. Unpleasant, but it would have filled the time.
But something happened this morning. I don't even understand exactly. I don't know if I was just tired. I really did have a long work day yesterday, like, from two in the morning till 11 at night because of all this drama that's happening internationally is more work for me. So maybe I was just tired, but I just woke up and I almost couldn't move. It took me two hours just to get up to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. At least I did that. And I thought, “Okay, I'm moving. I can't get to work and get a little bit done before therapy.” I wanted to get a lot done. I like having my work finished before therapy so that afterwards I can just do whatever I need to recover. Because after therapy sometimes I really need a long nap. Sometimes I need a walk outside. Sometimes I need hours to journal or create or do art or something. To process, you know, to come back to the world where everybody else lives around me. It feels so far away sometimes. And my trying to live in that world is not faking. It's an authentic effort. But I don't belong there. But I know I can't just live in my head either. So here I am. I'm trying. And I got my teeth brushed, and I thought, “Okay, I'll just sit down at the computer and do a little bit,” and tried to focus.
But before I could do that the school texted that there's some kind of winter storm warning, and so they're sending Chromebooks home—the ones who get them—they're sending Chromebooks home in case they don't have school tomorrow. And the thought of the children being home tomorrow somehow pushed me over the edge and back into bed, where I stayed until 11:01, just to make sure I was late to therapy. What is that about? It took me 20 minutes to tell her even all of that.
She said whatever state this is, even if it's not a person, meaning like an altar or a switching problem or someone else inside, that it's just okay to hold space for that and respect it. She said, “I don't need you to be in one specific emotional state to do therapy correctly.” That's when I started crying.
I think part of what went wrong with my previous Kelly was that there was not space for my big feelings. That layer of toxic positivity that now I'm connecting to religious trauma. And so when those states were rejected there were related parts, or altars, I guess, who were also rejected. Which basically caused a mutiny and got us stuck for a season in a really bad place. I'm not in that bad place now, and I know that. But all these thoughts and feelings swirl around in my head and won't come out my mouth, even when connected as insight or hindsight.
I sat there another 15 minutes unable to speak, tears pouring down my face when nothing was even wrong, and she just quietly said, “I am here with you in this space. I am here with you in this space.” All that did was make me cry harder.
[25 second pause]
I don't know why she didn't say anything wrong. I was not afraid of her. But it's been a long time since I shared space like that with someone, since walls came down like that. And feeling honored and tended to as I am melted me back into that therapy space that I have missed for three years. I couldn't look at her, and I'm scared to believe that we're really building a space between us that it safe enough to say anything or feel anything, much less to say everything and feel everything. And how do you feel the intimacy of that space and it not trigger up the pain from having had that before and it being taken away? And then there's parts flying around in my head, not really flying but, thoughts and voices and signs of what if everything was okay and we're the ones that ruined it? What if we ruin this too? Or what if it really wasn't okay and we just didn't know it for so long? So what if this isn't okay either, right now? Or how do you feel that space around you like warm water on a warm day, and not soak up the sky? Not let the walls come down. Now acknowledge that the others are there waiting, needing. That I am needing this space. That I have missed this space for three years. Or the recognition that it maybe wasn't my previous Kelly I was so attached to and desperately needed so much. Maybe it was just safety and permission to be myself as I am.
She said therapy only works through relationship, at least for trauma. But that that relationship is different than any other relationship because it's about holding space for all of me, not about meeting her needs or being something for her.
We talked about fawning and how dysregulating it is when we don't have to. I imagined the giant slip and slide the children made on the hill at the house in the country, and how they poured oil on it before turning on the water hose, and how fast they flew down, squealing with delight. Letting go of fawning is not that much fun and certainly not a delight. It's terrifying. Fawning keeps us safe by following the rules, by being good, by not stirring the pot or stirring the water, or causing any kind of trouble, by being agreeable and accommodating, regardless of its impact on me. It means keeping the caregiver in my life happy, entertained, feeling safe, feeling loved, tended to, paid attention to, the center of the universe, just so that I can hold my own gravity.
[30 second pause]
Because if they are safe and happy and comfortable and occupied then they won't notice me and I wont to be in danger.
[24 second pause]
But that means the problem with a really good therapist, who can hold presence and hold space, is that there is attunement, and your emotional needs are noticed and reflected and met. That you are tended to and cared for and welcome, even noticed. That's the problem in being noticed, because that's always been dangerous in the past. So how do you hold space for that? Space for safety in being noticed and tended to when it's unfamiliar and dysregulating, and so it doesn't feel safe at all?
And 10 more minutes passed. She said, “I am here, with you, in this space. And I require nothing more from you right now.” She said we could stay in that space, creating space between us, like the brooding of a spirit on a new world not yet formed, waiting to see what is created, breathing something new to life. That was therapy today. And still I could say nothing. And still the tears came.
I have learned over the last three years that wanting to be like someone, wanting to be close to someone, in ways that meet their needs but deny my own or giving pieces of myself away are red flags that I'm fawning. Red flags that I'm actually in danger. So this was new to experience something else, nothing being asked of me, no boundary transgressions, no role to play, no show to put on. Just me, unsure of who I am, unsure of who I want to be, unclear about how to grow us into me, or what she will look like, feeling unsteady and not confident about trying therapy again. And I finally squeaked out that I felt shame about therapy having been such a disaster last time. And she looked at me in the eyes and said, “I have broad shoulders, and I am here with you right now in this space.” And this time she added, “We can go where you need to go or stay here in silence, whatever you want to talk about or not talk about. I don't have an agenda. There's nothing I need you to do, and no one I need you to be. Whatever comes up is acceptable, appropriate, exactly right. And wherever you are is where I will be, holding space with you, here with you, in this space that we share.” And the tears came again, the relief of not owing anyone anything. The comfort and freedom to be who I am, whatever that means. There's safety in it being okay that I don't know yet what that looks like. That I couldn't make words come today. That I had big feelings I could acknowledge and sit with, even if I couldn't talk about them yet, and that being okay.
The relief of not having expectations. The lifting of the burden of needing to take care of her so that she could take care of me, which then I realized connected my previous Kelly to my mother. That's how I found the transference, the reenactment, the root of the fawning. That's when I had words, finally, but didn't say them. Because they were mine. And I needed to practice holding space with where I am instead of fixing it, or trying to make it go away, or pushing through just to make her more comfortable.
That's how a session that in the past would have felt like a failure seems like a big success. And I remembered that Larry at Healing Together said when therapy goes bad, we don't fail. When therapy goes bad, it fails us.
So we have our jar of marbles to help us be explicit about transference, and how we're feeling about therapy, and how safe it feels or not. And when there's something that builds trust in our new therapist we add a marble and write down what it's for. We have an actual jar for the marbles even though it started out drawing it on paper in our journal. I think we shared the picture on the Community. When there's a rupture or something's uncomfortable or feels unsafe, we can take a marble away and we talk to her about it. And if it still doesn't feel good, we don't have to hit the marble back. But if it gets repaired, we write that down too. And then we put two marbles back in the jar because we get to keep what was good in the first place and there's another marble for repair.
Today was a day I needed to physically hold the marbles, playing with them in my hand, not because of switching or the passive influence of littles, but because I needed the therapeutic relationship to be tangible. Not because I needed something special from the office to take home, to remind me of her or to keep her real in my head, but to remember that what keeps it real is me. That the power of keeping my system safe, of keeping me safe, is mine. To remember that in this therapeutic relationship we have safety because it's healthy, and what makes it healthy is that I hold on to myself. I can share without giving pieces of myself away. I can be all of me instead of only who she wants me to be. That I can just be myself and I am enough. And therapy is good and right because those things are true, and because she's not going to make me do what I don't want to do, or I'm not ready to do, or I'm not comfortable doing. And she does not need me to be any specific part, or in any specific state, or to feel any specific feeling, or to talk about only the hard things, or to fake it about good things.
So maybe we didn't talk much, and I'm still not sure why we cried as much as we did. But I think therapy was good today not because of what I did or objectives that I met or goals that I finished, but because she held space for all of me, as I was, as I am. And because I did too. Maybe that's being present, aware of all of what's happening inside, like switching without the switching. Maybe it's being aware of these parts of me without forgetting to be me. I don't mean co-consciousness or all of them being me, or me being all of them. I mean holding space like we did in therapy. Like she did for us. Just being aware. “Okay. This is happening. It's okay that this is happening. I am here with you, in this space, without denying it or avoiding it or needing it to be anything else, without needing me to be anything else or ashamed of what I am or who I am.” Maybe that's why there were tears. Because for the first time in a long time it was okay to just be, and being was enough.
[Break]
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