Russian Dolls

I had this amazing counsellor for a while, she had these Russian Dolls in the room – you know the ones all nested in each other. She used the idea in therapy with me a lot – how I’m made up of all the various size dolls and they are all part of me but sometimes the big one needs to take charge because the teeny tiny doll can’t be running around in meetings and what not. At the time I was in an incredibly toxic job, I had never experienced a toxic workplace before, I will never again underestimate the danger you can find yourself in when you are not in a safe work place.

How did this play out in my day to day life? A little like this: I felt I was permanently under threat, my lizard brain doesn’t differentiate between actual and perceived threat, so I was frightened literally for my life for the entire time I was in the office. I felt inadequate, undervalued, unloved, outside of the gang, immature, silly and like a nuisance. My clever old brain got me to thinking when else have I felt like this and began to replicate behaviours I would have demonstrated during other times in my life when I perceived the same threats. I very quickly became someone I did not recognise, which led to a healthy dose of self-loathing and thus the spiral towards a mental health breakdown became somewhat inevitable. The counsellor helped me reframe my responses, and to some extent to learn the power of this teeny tiny dolls we all have within us and how we can make decisions to either revert or progress.

These are some thoughts and letters I wrote to the teeny tiny doll inside of me during this time.

Letters to her

I’ll protect you don’t worry, because you protect me, but we do need to work this relationship out.

We are part of each other, and nothing can change that, but I am bigger, stronger and more powerful than you, which is what makes you scared, but you can trust me, I am on your side, I AM your side.

What you need is total security and safety and you cannot process much except for highs and lows. You’re ego is still working itself out so we are between super-ego and id most of the time right? Much like the other her, the smaller and less useful brand new baby one, you need to feel safe, attached, and loved. I can do that for you – but I cannot let you have the rule of the roost. We all need a voice. We are in it together you and I, I and you. I am you.

So shall we start from the top, or the bottom, or the inside, or the beginning….let’s try that….it was all lovely wasn’t it, and then it wasn’t, when you began to be a single unit, you felt lonely didn’t you, overwhelmingly lonely. You were never part of their group, you were weaker, less intelligent, less important and less developed. Ha. Yes you WERE. The playing field is level now, don’t you see – all those things, all those “you can’t do that because…..” they mean nothing now, NOTHING. You can do anything, you have done everything.

She’s travelled the world, the bigger one, the one writing now, she’s made another human, she’s fallen in and out of love, she’s lost - an immense earth shattering loss, but she’s still here. Because all she learnt and gained, all that fight, all that rage and determination to prove who she could be, to not be pigeonholed, has helped, you’ve helped her. Without you she couldn’t do it, literally, without the power to strive, to be something, to do something, to always eternally BE better, based on a foundation of being told she could NOT do those things, she would never have done them.

But it’s a balance, God I hate that saying, because I don’t believe it is, I believe life, real life is in the swing. Balance is dull, it’s safe, she’s not present in a balanced life, and that means I cannot grow, growth is in the swing, teetering from one side to another on the tight rope, almost falling off. She falls sometimes, she falls and you get free run of it then, like a little kid in a sweet shop, all those IDmotions AND the power, money and agency to fulfil. Crumbs what a whale of a time you’ve had when she falls; the money, the drinking, the holidays, the men – ha, superb, total instant and useless gratification to supress intense emotions.

And yet.

She always gets back up, that’s one thing you can learn about her, if you are sticking around, she is super resilient, had to be, HAS to be. So she gets up, and in the swing back to balance, she learns, she GROWS, and boy does she do it with gusto. My goodness, nothing by halves this one, she takes the knock and comes back fighting harder than even she thought she could. Then balance arrives, and it begins to tip to the other side, pride, arrogance, complacency – not much space for you there, small windows of total bliss and joy but that’s not enough for her because she knows there is always more. Exhausting right.

So how are we going to work this. I’m finding you hard to be around at times, but I need you, and you sure need me, can we make a deal – are you a deal kind of person? How about this, how about I call on you? Or how about you come knocking when you think I need you and we take five minutes to be together? We eat cake. We do something daft, IN THE MOMENT, I give you the time you need to feel and be all the amazing and incredible things you are. Then I get on with life, I use all you have given me, all the others have too and I use them like my fuel to progress and to swing again, back to the happy horizon or from one edge to another.

Safe though. Safe because as one we are better, stronger and more capable