It’s time for a therapy break – again. But along with the usual feelings of loss and separation, this particular time of year heightens the feelings of being excluded. My therapist is not just on a break – she is spending time, as so many people do over Christmas, with family. She will be surrounded by the people she loves; she will be engaged in family traditions that bind them all together as a unit. They will talk, laugh, remember, and sit close. And I will think about them doing that, as I have been thinking about the prospect of it already, and it will be painful – very, very painful. Of course I want all manner of good things for her – including opportunities to rest and spend time with her children! But what hurts is the fact that that is a part of her life that I will never have access to, and that not being a family member, friend, or even a casual acquaintance, there are certain types of access I will never have to her.

I described that pain of feeling excluded a few months ago, in my post ‘Being excluded from your therapist’s life: you’ve read the reasons – this is how it feels’, which you can find here:

https://lifeinabind.com/2015/04/18/being-excluded-from-your-therapists-life-youve-read-the-reasons-this-is-how-it-feels/

I think that at this time of year, exclusion feels heightened because it is so much easier to make comparisons with others and therefore to focus not just on what I can’t have, but on what others have instead. And as my therapist has pointed out, the unspoken (and for me, barely realised) undertone of that comparison, is a belief that I compare unfavourably with those who have what I desire. That somehow the reason for that insufficiency, is my insufficiency. That I am less acceptable, less worthy, less deserving.

In my post on feeling excluded, I spoke about being a ‘therapy daughter’ – a wonderful phrase my therapist sometimes uses to describe my relationship to her. But at this time of year, my identity as a therapy daughter can feel less like a special bond, and more like a differentiator between me and her ‘biological daughter’; a painful reminder of everything that she (her biological daughter) has access to, that I do not. For a number of reasons, I have been thinking  a great deal about that comparison this week, and having sessions in my therapist’s home makes it easier to indulge in imaginings about what Christmas will be like in her house, with her daughter; and that includes imaginings about the details of what I will be ‘missing out on’.

You see, when it comes to being a therapy daughter rather than a biological daughter,  it’s hard in so many ways. It’s hard being in that house when I know it’s not my space – even if a bit of it is my space for an hour, here and there – but it is and has been her space all along. It’s hard to know that the arms that she will be drawn close by, are the ones that I will never feel around me, and that the kisses in her hair, softly planted, will be, for me, only imagined or dreamed of. It’s hard to know that when I leave for the ‘therapy break’, she will be there even when she isn’t – because they are a part of each other. It’s hard to know that I am kept in mind during that break, but she is always kept in body, heart and soul; hard that I can be known, but she can really know. Hard that she can only ever be beautiful, because of how she is seen; whereas I constantly fear that my ugliness will betray me. It’s hard that she is a daughter, while I am only playing the part. Hard that, save ultimately, they never have to be parted; whereas for me, parting is not just something that takes place over Christmas – it is the end that was there from the beginning and that haunts every hello and goodbye.

I feel that lack of what I don’t have, particularly this Christmas time. And yet – I have the most wonderful therapist in the world, for me. Why do I say that? Because of this: “The reality is that difference, or not being my biological daughter, is no barrier to being connected, accepted or significant“. I can say without doubt that that sentence, and everything it means, is the best Christmas present I will have this year.