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Productive Visit To The Therapist
Written by Sean on Friday, July 17, 2009
Today I had a meeting with my therapist. I hadn’t seen her in about a month, and we haven’t done much real work together in nearly a year and a half. It was a rather productive session. It was good.
For various reasons, we stopped work for nearly a year. We hadn’t done a whole lot in the weeks before we stopped, and haven’t done any real work since we got back to it. But that was after the "adventures" with the local mental health services provider.
In any case, we spoke about different things for 20 or so minutes, just updating and chatting about what’s generally been happening. One of the things I mentionned is that I would like to explore the underlying reason I’m having so many nightmares. Another thing I mentionned is that I had been thinking a lot about self-injury lately, and had a bit of an epiphany that makes me think I might just have resolved some of the issues with a self-injury method (within my previously stated parameters).
Eventually we started talking about nightmarish dreams. I mentionned a recent dream in which I was on a small boat that sunk about 20 meters from the pier. I had a camera in hand and was trying to stop it from getting wet.
Dream interpretation is iffy at best. And I used to be in the habit of writing down my dreams and trying to make sense of the whole lot, never have. Still, the therapist said that in a research-based book about dreams, they discussed that dreams about or including water are often representing something emotional going on.
She asked me what was the camera representing. I thought for a moment, although the immediate thought I had was "me". I thought longer to see if I could come up with another explanation. But in the end, as with so many times, the first answer that came to mind appeared to be the right one.
Of course, just saying the camera represents me isn’t enough. I was asked how does the camera represent me.
Verbalising thoughts is not always easy. I’ve long had an interest in photography, even though I don’t practice as much as I’d like. Photography is a way of expressing myself. I can capture images of my life, and document them. I can adjust and interpret the images (and to some degree the reality) by adjusting the photos in the darkroom or in a software application. So perhaps the camera represents my ability to adjust my own reality?
What would happen if the camera got wet? The images would get out of focus. Scrambled, in a way. My perceptions would be changed. Not wanting to get the camera wet could be my subconscious telling me that I’m not wanting/ready to change perceptions. Perhaps I’m hanging on to some aspect of myself.
What am I holding on to?
In a way, I’m holding on to the part of "me, the unparalysed wheelchair user who has BIID". It’s the way I’ve been seeing myself like for a long time now. It’s hard to adjust one’s perception.
I knew I was digging around something that was close to home, because my heart beat got faster, a sure sign for me that I’m honing on to the "X marks the spot".
The next thing I wondered was whether or not my current perception of myself has been holding me back in actually finding a way to self-injure?
The therapist asked if there was tension between my need to be paralysed and something holding me back. She was looking for the right words and hesitated after "is there tension…". I couldn’t help joking that there was indeed a lot of tension. I knew she was still trying to formulate an answer, and I threw her off a bit. But we had a laugh.
It isn’t something I could just answer with yes or no. The thing is, I haven’t always seeking surgery for myself. For a very long time I was only seeking non-injury solutions to BIID. I thought that becoming a para would not magically heal me of all my ills. Injury or surgery is not a panacea, it isn’t a magic wand. Depression is unlikely to be lifted all of a sudden just because I would finally be in the body I need to be in. Other issues won’t just go away. And for a long time I was convinced I could find a way to appease the BIID demons without the rather invasive surgical/injury approach.
After so much therapy, so many types of therapies, and prescription drug trials, I am not so sure there is a way to heal BIID anguish, short of having the body we need. Because of that, in the last 5 or 6 years, I’ve switched my thinking to surgery or injury as the best outcome for my BIID. I am not naïve enough to think it would fix all. But it would resolve a heck of a lot. So because there is that small part of me that knows it wouldn’t solve everything, and there is of course some doubt that it would "fix" that part of me, there is indeed a bit of tension.
My therapist said that she was struggling with some ethical issues. She said that it’s the first time she feels I’m really close to self-injury, that I’m looking that much closer at it. She wants our meetings to be a safe place for me. She knows there is no other outlet/area/person to discuss these things with at this level. She says she feels we’ve reached hallowed grounds, that we’ve never been to before. At the same time, her responsibility as a therapist might limit the ability to go further. She can see I’ve actually changed, and it’s scares her somewhat.
I fully understand her dilemna. I think she does get it, but she is still constrained by the rules in place and if I talk about self-injury, there is a duty expected of her to report it. The whole old issue of "do no harm". I didn’t argue that point with her, because even if she agrees with me, she’s still constrained by that rule and at risk if she doesn’t do anything about it if she hears a client say they are about to injure themselves.
I asked her directly if I should refrain from talking about these issues. I don’t want to cause her troubles. I actually like her very much and she’s helped me a lot. She doesn’t want to block that road, I need to feel safe in exploring that. Had we closed that topic entirely, I wouldn’t have had the insight I had today. But we’ll have to take it a bit at a time. It’s not like there’s any course plotted on how to handle BIID. We’ll see what we do next as things happen. Cross bridges as we come to them.
She acknowledged that the issues I am dealing with are not "small-fry". It is a highly unusual and unknown condition. There are no protocols for dealing with it. And there isn’t a way forward either. I suggested it was pretty much uncharted territory for her, and she agreed it most certainly is.
And with that, the session was over. Covered a heck of a lot of ground in a bit more than a half hour. I thanked her. I find it amazing how I could have gone from the dream’s image of not wanting to get the camera wet, to getting that much out of it. Of course the dream symbolism may not mean that.. Still, my brain took me there while trying to puzzle it out. As much peer support as I’ve received and given through transabled.org, I wouldn’t have been able to reach those insights without the work with my therapist. Today, I feel like I have achieved a lot.
Tags: BIID, Injury, Paralysed, Surgery, Therapy
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3 Comments
It was not until about 18 months ago that I began to understand that paraplegia was the only solution; not to depression or anxiety or anything else; just to the BIID.
But you’re right. Letting go of one’s BIID identity is not trivial. Being transabled is such a hard thing to acknowledge to oneself in the first place. Then you reach some kind of comfort zone with it. THEN you realise you have to give it up to take the next step… Shit!
It has taken me a long time to let go of my intersex identity, and I’m still not completely there. But more and more: I’m just a woman.
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1 On 18 July, 2009, Phil said:
Dear Sean,
somewhere in the middle of your text I felt very earnest suddenly. There is something in what you wrote that goes beyond the things I have read of you before. I can’t tell what it is, maybe it’s not even what you say, but the way you wrote it.
That reminds me of what my doctor (who is much more than just my doctor for me) said a long time ago: he had the feeling that I “played” somewhat with my life. And he was right. I still am “playing” with the thought of having BIID, of needing to be a double above knee amputee and all that. I have to “play” with it, because it is too heavy for me to bear as a simple, but real fact.
But there has to be a time – or there have to be times – where I let it sink in to the bottom of my soul and feel the weight of it.
Changing perception is one of the most precious aspects of therapy I have experienced. Maybe a big, drastic, unforeseeable change of perception could even resolve the enigma of BIID?
At least when I feel the true weight of all this, my desparation diminishes or changes its character to some extent. I find myself, a core of me, that is able to carry the weight, and by this other weights feel less heavy and I feel myself more intensely.
It is so good to know that there are others out there who have to carry a similar weight.