It’s saying goodbye to all the good times you might have together if you didn’t have to say goodbye—all the fun, shared plans and dreams you had dared to believe in, building a future on the shifting sands of your hopeful, fragile optimism. It’s all gone now, and forever, and it is unutterably sad.
We have to say goodbye for lots of reasons. Someone has died or they are dieing. Or they don’t want to see you anymore. Or you have woken up to the fact that, though you really love them, you can’t love them in the way they need you to, or vice versa. Sometimes you’ve just had enough: the pain outweighs the gain—or you realise you have been in denial all this time about the pain and/or the gain you imagined was just a fantasy.
Perhaps there has been abuse, betrayal, dependence, mixed messages, games, wasted time, passivity, boredom, endless conflict (often over minor things that represent major things—in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ magnificent Love in the time of Cholera, the two protagonists’ differences were distilled and crystallised into an argument about soap). Your same old tired, unhealthy pattern, yet again. All kinds of hurt. You want different things. You have irreconcilable differences. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s not me, it’s you. You hate each other or, worse, feel completely indifferent. Sometimes it just comes down to choice between you or the other person. You have to choose you. Go on now go, walk out the door.
If you both try, you might be able to navigate through your turbulent waters, and find a way back to each other, and start over, perhaps with some new and different rules of engagement. But of course you might not be sure you want to--whether to stay or go is one of life’s toughest questions. Perhaps this time, however, it really is the end. You might discover you can end this relationship without a moment’s hesitation, without a single backward glance, and you realise you only thought there was love. You were in love with the idea of love. But other times it is hard to say goodbye to love, and you are heartbroken. The amount of pain is proportional to the amount of love. If it hurts, it means you are human. You are alive.
It remains unopened. He can’t bear to say goodbye.
Another client kept all the letters from a former partner that he still hankered for. One day, he decided to burn them all, and he was astonished how intense the flames were—the old love letters produced a great deal of heat and light. It was a symbolic experience: he realised how much energy his continued infatuation took from him. After the bonfire, he was able to reclaim that energy, rouse himself from his post-break-up doldrums, and move on in his life with vigour and confidence and a renewed sense of love.
• “A Doll’s House”: Ibsen’s play—written in 1879 but still highly relevant and much-performed—tells the story of Nora, trapped in a stifling bourgeois marriage, characteristic of so many traditional pre-feminist heterosexual couples of yesteryear. One piece of research from the 1970s showed generally elevated levels of psychological distress in single men—and married women. In many old-fashioned partnerships the man holds the power and control, while the woman is subservient, obedient, repressed. The union—controlling parent “ego state” meets submissive child “ego state”—has a dysfunctional kind of equilibrium that can last for years, decades even. Until—with or without therapy—the latter finds their voice, their power, and wakes up. (Or, in fiction, comes to a sticky end, punished for the temerity of wanting to shake off their shackles, eg. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and other desperate housewives.) In the last scene of Ibsen’s play, Nora rejects her enslavement to the marriage, motherhood and the tightly constraining, stereotypical role that she has been assigned. She slams the door on the Doll’s House and walks free.
What do these endings have in common? • A decisive, dramatic finality • An action taken with a great deal of courage • A sense of wisdom prevailing over convenience • Style, and some good lines. Yes, we’ll always have Paris. But fiction is easy. Real life is messier and far more complicated. Our time is up How do you say goodbye to your therapist? Do you just stop coming without warning, despite the fact your therapist may have a termination clause in their terms and conditions (I ask for a notice period of at least two sessions). Such a clause may sound self-serving for the therapist but it’s really for clients, who are denied the benefits of a proper ending if they don’t show up. It’s an opportunity to review and consolidate all the work you've done, to say what you’ve been trying to say all these weeks, to offer up feedback, to have a sense of direction going forward. To say goodbye. “Many clients come to therapy with issues about unsatisfactory endings or losses,” write Emmy van Duerzen and Martin Adams. “It is important that the client does not experience the end of therapy as something else that ended unsatisfactorily.” A recent article in The Guardian—“Breaking up with a therapist”—quoted a 28-year-old woman from Seattle, who has ended three of her relationships with her therapists by “ghosting” them: “The whole point of having a therapist is not being emotionally invested in them, [and] they aren’t emotionally invested in you if they’re doing their job right,” she said. I disagree with this point of view. Therapy without emotional investment is like decaf coffee—nice enough but missing the key ingredient. Without some sense of understanding, acceptance and connection, without feeling anything, the potential for lasting change is limited. Clients often wonder how important they are to their therapist. “You must have a lot more interesting clients than me”—I’ve heard that a few times. Or the other day a client stopped midsentence and said: “Don’t you ever get bored of listening to this shit?” There’s an assumption that for the therapist, saying goodbye must be easy, maybe even a relief in some cases. It’s never written about, but for the therapist, too, goodbyes can be hard. Dearly departed One thing about goodbyes between people who love each other is that they are never really final. Maybe the goodbye doesn’t hold, and you get back together. Or you keep bumping into each other, or you haunt each other on social media. Even if you stop seeing someone you love, they have become part of you, and you part of they—powerful “internal objects” that continue to grow and influence you. The love, the energy, the relationship—these things keep evolving even in the absence of any further refuelling by each other’s actual presence. Human connections can thrive despite a lack of geographical proximity. Or even a lack of the loved one being alive. Jung was 21 when his father, a pastor, died. His father appeared in dreams throughout his adult life. He became a much greater guide and teacher to Jung in death than he ever was in life. Death shall have no dominion.
Last word
Goodbye! Has the dawn of the internet age been good for our mental health? Or really bad? There is great optimism: the digital revolution heralds a utopian, democratic, postmodern world where we are all connected, resourced, empowered, heard, transparent, authentic and free to be who we are. There was even a theory that the internet might flatten a chronically unlevel playing field, though perhaps only for those that have a smart phone and good wifi. There is great pessimism: we’re entering a dystopian, virtual world where a person is reduced to an online profile to be swiped left or right, texts replace conversation, virtual friends replace real ones, “likes” replace activism, emoticons replace emotions (except for anxiety—lots more anxiety). Human intelligence outsourced to machines, vast amounts of time wasted, attention spans worse than a goldfish, retrograde evolution. We plug into a world wide web and watch helplessly as our humanity drains away. To stay alive, and truly connected, we sometimes have to unplug. One story this week highlights the internet as a problem for our inner worlds; another explores its claims to be a solution: Problem? Parent Zone’s report, The Perfect Generation: Is the Internet Undermining Young People's Mental Health?, contains the results of a survey of teachers and teenagers. Among the findings: • 44% of teachers think the internet is bad for young people’s mental health, compared to 28% of young people. • 91% of teachers believe the frequency of mental health issues among pupils is increasing. • Of these issues, schools report stress and anxiety (95%), depression (70%) and self-harm (66%) as the most common issues amongst pupils. • 84% of schools say they do not have adequate resources to deal with pupils’ mental health issues. Vicki Shotbolt, CEO of Parent Zone, says: “The internet has destroyed any notions we might have had about keeping some things away from children until they were ‘old enough to cope’. “All of the indicators suggest that the prevalence of mental health problems and the severity of those problems are increasing. Some people are linking the internet to the increase.” The report concludes that new problems require new solutions, that schools need much better resources for responding to mental health issues, and that tech companies “should recognise both their duty of care and their unique opportunity to create online spaces that are positive and inspiring.” Solution? Meanwhile, in “I tried to fix my mental health on the internet,” anxiety sufferer Joe Madden made himself a human guinea pig to see if computers could replace counsellors, subjecting himself to three varieties of e-help: text-based, social media and video-conference. Writes Madden (for the BBC): “Could e-counselling be the answer to the mental health issues escalating amongst under-30s? With cuts to mental health services really starting to bite, digitised therapy could be just the ticket for young adults who already filter nearly every aspect of their lives – friends, work, sex, entertainment – through a screen.” He concludes: “E-counselling still feels like it's finding its feet: there are useful tools out there for the mild-to-medium prang-brained, but, as yet, no killer app that feels destined to reinvent mental health care for the hashtag age. What form might that ingenious wonder app take? No idea. If I knew that, I'd be off making it, instead of here, recklessly toying with my mental well-being for your half-distracted amusement.” In “The psychodynamics of social networking,” therapist Aaron Balick quotes Kranzberg’s First Law of Technology: it is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. Concludes Balick, “The need to relate has not changed. The need to recognise and be recognised has not changed. The need to seek and be sought has not been altered. The architecture, however, of the ways we do all these fundamental things that ake us human has indeed changed, and that may be changing us.” We are increasingly addicted to our “electronic cocaine” and sometimes we must unplug, disconnect, such that we might return again to the real connections, the ones that are a primary human need—connections with self, with others, with nature. Traditional therapy, as old as the hills, remains untouched by technology, and untouchable. Two people sit in a quiet, spare room. One is there to serve the other. If all goes well the encounter facilitates acceptance, change and growth. For the better. It is not a cure, for there is no cure for life. But it helps. Therapy is a place where you can become who you want to be—who you are meant to be. Where you can learn to live—if not the life you imagined, then the life that has been waiting for you all along. --John Barton On June 23, citizens of the United Kingdom are being asked to vote whether or not we should remain faithful to the European Union. Should we try to patch things up and make it work? Or, perhaps citing “irreconcilable differences,” opt for a separation and divorce? Stay or go? Such a stark, black-and-white choice in a scenario characterised by multiple shades of grey. Does it feel too good to leave—but also too bad to stay? There are push and pull factors on both sides of the ledger: Stay: pull factors • We like Europe and the Europeans, and they like us. The way you wear your hat, the way we sip our tea. We learn from each other. Our doors are always open to each other. We’ve known each other such a long time. We’ve been through such a lot. We work well together. We’ve more or less kept the peace for decades and our joint finances are successful. Let’s stay together.
Go: pull factors • We’ll be free without you. You’ve been holding us back all these years. Unshackled, a great deal of joy and energy will be released and we will surely do great things. We can become the person we have always wanted to be. And we can see other people! Already we’ve flirted with China, Brazil. It’s all very exciting! Unchain my heart. Go: push factors • For the xenophobes, anti-immigrant hysterics, little Englanders, Daily Mail readers, empire nostalgists and Social Darwinists, the decision is easy. They’ve never liked you, and never wanted anything to do with the arranged marriage. And they think they’re better than you—“we” are surely good, whereas “you” are surely bad, lazy, criminal, dirty, weak, perverted, bankrupt, corrupt, attracted to peculiar foods. We don’t think those things, but we’re tired of being treated with contempt. We never get a say, our opinion doesn’t matter. We always have to compromise and do it your way. You are maxing out our joint credit card. You are too bossy, aggressive or passive-aggressive. You make the rules, we have to follow them. You’re just not very generous, and you're never going to change. And we’re just too different. We can still be friends, but if we stay married things will only get worse. Love will tear us apart. Your relationship referendum The EU referendum is powerful metaphor for your more personal, intimate relationships, partnerships, marriages. Are you unhappy? Should you stay or should you go? Again, there will be a tapestry of circumstances. Some push factors foreclose any other considerations, for example domestic abuse. Others can be big but not necessarily insurmountable, such as an affair or betrayal. And there are always pull factors keeping you together: your shared history, the convenience of the status quo, and, above all, children. And how will it be on your own anyway? The stereotype is that women feel the immediate emotional impact of a break-up more than men, but long-term fare much better on their own than men do. A piece of research from 1972 suggests that marriage is bad for the mental health of women, which given the power dynamics of some very traditional marriages isn’t surprising, although later figures show no gender difference. You imagine a glamorous bacherlorhood perhaps, free of obligation and duty, exploring all those things you wanted to do but never had the time. Maybe the reality is you are home alone in an indifferent world. There are no invitations to dinner or weekends away. Just you and the deafening sound of the phone not ringing. Who wants to be lonely? But maybe some loneliness would be good for you? Preliminary investigations • Jannah Walshe recommends a clear-headed assessment of the relationship—not so much the other person—first alone and then together, with questions like these: Is this relationship serving us both or just the other person? Do I spend more time questioning whether the relationship is right or wrong than enjoying it? Is there more to learn for me in this relationship, or can I best learn and grow outside of this relationship? Would leaving this relationship be an act of self-care? • Similarly, Bruce Derman Ph.D. offers 7 questions to ask if you’re thinking of divorce, starting with: Were you ever really married? Was there a time when you has an us, with reciprocal, mutual intimacy? Or have you always been a bit like flatmates who sometimes have sex? • Take Relate’s relationship MOT quiz. It’s good to talk The best advice if you’re not happy is to return once again to a simple, four-letter-word: talk. It’s not easy, especially if one of the problems in the relationship to begin with was not talking. • Relationship and marriage expert Dr. John Gottman claims couples wait an average of six years of being unhappy before speaking out. You will never get those six years back again. • Belgium has the highest divorce rate in the world, 71 percent, and the second-highest suicide rate in Western Europe. These facts are often attributed to “binnenvetter”—a characteristic Flemish personality who bottles things up inside. • It is so much easier to talk with a mediator, referee, coach, guide—a couples counsellor. Find one online or through organizations like Relate or the Tavistock Centre. In “Hold me tight,” Dr. Sue Johnson advocates “emotionally-focussed therapy”: “seven conversations for a lifetime of love” that explore and promote each partner’s emotional responsiveness to each other. “Emotion comes from a Latin word emovere, to move,” she writes. If a couple is going to reconnect, they have to “let their emotions move them into new ways of responding to each other.” Tough decisions can be made with compassion • In his book ”I love you but I’m not in love with you,” Andrew G. Marshall says “the ILYB conversation,” with 100 percent honesty, can lighten the path to a relationship renaissance—or to the exit sign. If the latter, the ILYB talk will help you to make sense of the breakup. Having a clear, truthful narrative about why the partnership ended is crucial to the mourning process—to be left, cheated on or suddenly “ghosted,” without explanation, can cause months and years of misery. • Whether you stay or go, it’s never black and white, and you have some control over what the shades of grey look like. In “Rewriting the Rules,” Meg John Barker writes that you don’t have to follow the old stereotypical rom-com/sitcom rules of a break-up which dictate it’s completely over, there’s a good guy and a bad guy, and the former will never speak to the latter again. Relationships don’t end, says Barker, they change. Breaking up with someone with love and respect can spare a lot of pain all around. Stay or go? Or something else? Perhaps if you listen, you might just hear the generous, loving voice of your own wisdom. It knows it's not all your fault. It knows it's not all your partner's fault, either. It has compassion for you both. It knows what to do. Trust it. To partners past, present and future—to Europe—let’s give thanks, and be grateful. We had some really special times together, didn’t we? We’ll always be there for each other, on some level. Things die, love lives on. |
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AuthorJohn Barton is a counsellor, psychotherapist, blogger and writer with a private practice in Marylebone, Central London. To contact, click here. |