Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Relational Injury. Episode 2. The Reckoning.

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Relational Injury. Episode 2. The Reckoning. · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: To episode two of Relational Injury.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, and this is part of the In the Consulting Road series.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the first episode, I talked about realization, the point at which the fragments come together and form a picture which is unpalatable, shocking, wounding.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very hard phase because what it does is to join all of the dots that we've managed to successfully keep apart to protect ourselves from a painful truth, which is an illusion that we've lived by.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The reckoning has a nice quality about it because it implies rebalancing and taking recognition into some kind of action.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's something implicit about the notion of justice because the reckoning is almost like a kind of the day of judgment.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And some people who reach this point experience a desire for retribution, a desire to confront that person with the reality of the realization that you've had.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it also has other parts to it, and whilst I don't condone taking action to express retribution, there is a need for some kind of confrontation with reality.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the most powerful form is that which is internal, because there does come a point when simply knowing is no longer enough because you can't unknow what you've begun to see.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is the reckoning.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking about facing a psychological reality, something I speak about in the book of the same title.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the reckoning is precisely this: it's allowing the experience to be thought about rather than defended and understandably protected against.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not easy because the mind will tend to try and protect us through minimization, rationalization, blaming of the self.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes individuals understandably feel compelled to confront the person who caused them to experience the harm that they have.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it can make it can take many forms, like a conversation, which is pointless, a letter which probably won't be read, or some kind of boundary.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there I think there is currency, a boundary.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll come back to this.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the clinical reality, the human reality, is that confrontation doesn't guarantee resolution.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for resolution, you're probably wasting your time because the person who caused the harm doesn't do resolution.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it matters not.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what we can say is that they will deny, deflect, rationalize, slip into victim mode because they lack the psychological capacity to recognize the injury that they've caused.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so this can deepen the wound if not approached carefully.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the question shifts from will they understand and will they accept to actually what do I need to say to be truthful to myself?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this is about internal confrontation, and this is the deeper work, and it's often the more painful because, as much as we may want to confront, this may give us a sense of temporary gratification, but it won't resolve anything.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It involves recognizing where you tolerated what hurt you, where you hoped something would change, and where you adapted in order to preserve the relationship.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the lengths that people will go to to adapt to their perception of the needs of the others and denying their own needs to preserve the relationship are considerable.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't though about blame, it's about integration.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Peter Fonegy in his work on mentalization describes this as the capacity to hold mind in mind, to understand both self and the other.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the reckoning asks, what happened to me?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: What did I feel?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: What did I need that I didn't receive?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is necessarily without criticism.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's about recognizing what has actually happened, naming it, not asking why, but more naming what happened, what did I feel, what didn't I receive.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And at this stage, a number of things will come to the surface, and one of those may be grief.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's an inevitability about that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But not just for what happened, but for what didn't happen, what couldn't happen, what you hoped would happen.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is often where people feel a combination of things, a deep sadness, anger, and a sense of loss that feels disproportionate.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it it isn't disproportionate, it's accurate.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reckoning is necessary, but it isn't a place to live.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's called being stuck and not being able to let go.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So without movement, it can become a kind of constant rumination and a shaping of your identity that becomes organized around the injuries and actually re-traumatizing yourself.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I say to patients very often in the in in saying, ask what not why, is because when we ask what, we move away from the experience, we are describing what we're experiencing, what that's called.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that requires the use of a different part of the brain.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Once we ask why, we revisit the events which then can re-traumatize us and keep us stuck.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we ask why.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why did this happen?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't I see it?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why was this person so persistently negligent?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And those are those are good questions, but I I believe that in a way we can't begin to answer those until we've named those things.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because trying to seek answers will at that point keep us stuck.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: The answers are only relevant when we move into recovery because the answers then inform what we do next.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is easy to talk about and it isn't so easy to do.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I I've I so often say to people, ask yourselves what has happened.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Write it down, put it in an envelope or wherever, and put it in the drawer and come back to it another time.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But don't ask why, because that guarantees you staying stuck.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Of course we want to know why.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course we do.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a right time to do that.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think one of the problems is that when we ask why we're when we're in the midst of the the disorganization and the chaos and the anger and the loss, we won't we won't find answers.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: The questions are valid, it's just about timing.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is why we have to move carefully towards recovery.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery isn't about changing what happened, that's not possible.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Very often, when I'm working with patients, and certainly with adult patients, they may say, but I can't change the past.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And my response is always the same.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's no, you can't.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: But your relationship with the past and the sense that you make of the past can change, and then you become free of it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: This this is highly relevant because none of us go through life without experiencing some form of relational injury, and it can be devastating, particularly if it's cumulative when it occurs in childhood, but it can just as easily happen in adult life.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So many of the people I've worked with who've been victims of some kind of abuse are stuck.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't been able to move into the three stages I'm talking about, and they're stuck in a sort of pre-recognition state where all they all they're aware of is how badly they feel, and how their central nervous systems are locked in a state of hypervigilance, and how the prospect of having any other kind of relationship is just impossible because they kind of get stuck with the idea of maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn't that bad.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, the work of therapy is about enabling them to understand to do the recognition.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, this was bad, this did happen to you.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This what you what you're experiencing is real, and that then helps the person to move into the next phase, which is about the reckoning.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think what's really critical here is the importance of allowing yourself to be open with yourself.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't get anything wrong, you simply got stuck in something which, yes, you played a part in, and again, not a criticism, but just a human failing.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding that will help you in terms of the movement into recovery, which is about having healthy boundaries and healthy terms.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often I see with adolescent girls in particular that they carry their childhood wounds into adolescence and they're seeking something which causes them to potentially become compromised because the vulnerability that they have, combined with the need for unconditional love, puts them in positions where they may be at risk.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So part of my work is about helping them to develop healthy boundaries, help them to decide what is right for them, what's good for them, and what's not.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about me telling them, it's about me trying to show them because that's part of the third phase of recovery, actually emerging with a sense of I know what is right and I know what's wrong for me, and being able to voice that, not be compromised.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this, I've seen it so many times with adults, and how they have not realized it's okay to have boundaries, to say no, I I no, I no, no, no, we we we can't we can't be that way for this relationship to work.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain things that I need, and I won't compromise on that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important, it's very powerful, but getting to that point requires an understanding, and this we go back to recognition, an understanding of what it is we're recognizing.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And once, as I've said, once we see it, we can't unsee it, and it's a question of what we do next.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I met somebody recently, not in a therapeutic context, but somebody who was I think absolutely blown to bits by what had happened in his relationship with someone.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he uh he he spoke about it, and we've spoken a few times, and he's a lovely young man who I think has a good deal of insight, but he's he's kind of navigating his way through what sounds like being manipulated in a sort of consistently hideous way, and he's beginning to see, and this is the the the recognition, that it was manipulation, and he's also beginning to see that actually it's not a fault in in him, it was a human frailty that was actually underpinned by really positive regard for the the the woman he was in a relationship with, and he described lots of different things which he was questioning, and I I felt a real sense of hope for him because I could I I said to him, you have to think of a line, a line that you haven't had, you have to put this line down in front of you, and you have to make sure that you are one side of it and she is the other side.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about being aggressive, it's about it it's about knowing what the line means and holding it.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw him a few days ago and I said, How's the line?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he just kind of looked at me as if to say, Well, doing my best.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Look, it's okay, it's what you've got to do.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to hold the line.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: We spoke for a bit, and he's a really nice young man, and I think he'll be absolutely fine.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought when I listened to what he was telling me, and it came just in a casual context, I just thought, my God, you know, this is this is so common.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what was what was very interesting was he wasn't vengeful, he was he he was he was thoughtful, deeply wounded, but I could see that he had he was on the cusp of the reckoning.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: He he he'd done a lot of the recognition, but he was on the cusp of the reckoning.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to him, You're you're a good man, and you you can do better than this.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I reminded him of the song by uh Gautier, John I think it's John Gautier, I'm not sure, but it was the the line of, now you're just somebody that I used to know.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And typically he hadn't heard of it, so he promised me that he'd ever listen.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me think, well, actually, we're not taught how to navigate our way through these things.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: We just kind of find ourselves in them, but we learn by experience.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think in the episode that is about recovery, it has to do with completing as best we can stages one and two, and looking at what recovery really recent sorry really involves.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about expunging, which is a lovely word.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if if there is somebody you want to expunge, buy yourself a big yellow sponge and put the letter X on it and send it to them.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: They may or may not understand unless they've listened to these podcasts.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: But to expunge means to disconnect, to literally obliterate, to make no longer present.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, the expunging, the act of doing that is internal.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to go out and buy sponges in tomorrow's tomorrow's headlines, dramatic sales of sponges and black felt tip ins.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I think here what we have to do is to create psychological health, and this has to do with boundaries, it has to do with keeping yourself emotionally clean.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as there may be rage and wounding, wounds wounds can be healed.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Rage is something which can subside, it's okay to voice it, it's not okay to enact it, because that tends to have horrible consequences.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I will come back with episode three on recovery soon.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was very what's the word I'm looking for, quite shocked at the number of people who had viewed the the post that preceded this particular episode seems to me like sometimes I talk about things that really resonate with others.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, the very first episode was downloaded, I think, 150 times in the first 45 minutes of it being published.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you're also very welcome to follow me on Facebook where you'll get automatic updates or subscribe to whichever platform you listen to these podcasts on.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There will be plenty more.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I hope they help, and I'll be back soon.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.