Arnos Vale Cemetery and Arnos Park are probably the most frequently visited places with my dog. It is also where I go to feel sad. It seems ok to be sad in a cemetery. The cemetery, in parts, has been reclaimed by nature; overgrown, with wonky, cracked gravestones and an impressive variety of plants and wildlife including rare Lesser Horseshoe bats. It is here that I started using the very rudimentary ‘notes’ application on my phone to capture some of my thoughts and feelings on these walks, along with what I was noticing in my surroundings, in the present moment. My first notes refer to painful, complex feelings and at the same time a sense of simplicity, which is a theme that re-emerges time and time again. Around this time, my therapy and journal writing kept re-visiting ‘power’. I had a small section of my hair dyed red and tore out an article from a magazine at the hairdressers, called ‘The Power of Pets’ (Tracy Ramsden, Marie Claire – November, 2016), with a bold picture of an English Bull Terrier called ‘Neville’, dressed in an ornamental red coat.
As an aside, I’m just reading back through this section a few years after first writing it and having a chuckle to myself – the other day my daughter (now age 6) said, ‘I wish I had a Neville on my shoulder whispering what to do when I’m bored’. She was referring, I assume, to the Devil whispering into Little Billy’s ear in the Roald Dahl story, ‘The Minpins’. I too loved that story as a child and could often be found chattering away to tiny people in the trees. This also reminds me of a Gestalt ‘experiment’ I did in the early days of counselling training when we were practising being ‘counsellor’ and ‘client’. I was the ‘client’, and the ‘counsellor’ pointed out a gesture I was making repeatedly towards my shoulder – I said it was like there was a devil on my shoulder, my ‘critical voice’, and I was invited to give it a persona. What sprang to mind was Dick Dasterdly from Wacky Races. A few days later I was walking down the street and the ‘devil’ showed up again on my shoulder. I imagined a giant hand – Monty Python style – flicking the tiny Dick Dasterdly off my shoulder and sending him bumping along the pavement. And so my ‘critical voice’ had lost its power, a process which has come a long way but still requires regular attention.
Back to Neville though. In the magazine, Ramsden mentions a psychotherapist, Wendy Bristow, who is quoted saying that pets represent the dependent, pre-verbal stage of an infant and that Freud was a great dog-lover and believed the relationship was about affection without ambivalence. I reluctantly include a Freud reference, but it does seem particularly relevant. Bristow suggests that we can see our pets as therapists and dogs can ‘read’ the right side of our faces, which express emotions more than the left ‘poker face’ side. I recall a hairstyle I had as an adolescent, where my hair literally covered the right side of my face. Furthermore, many people have told me I have a good ‘poker face’. Hiding my emotions felt necessary in the past I think; not long before this, my father had left my mother and we had all left the family farm. My life was altered beyond recognition and a double trauma followed when I was 15. I resorted to regular binge drinking for the following 15ish years and realise now that I had become fairly adept at dissociating.
Keeping in mind Rothschild’s KEY 3 – ‘Remembering is Not Required’ (1), I choose not to recount here what happened when I was 15. I have addressed it in therapy for many years and continue to do so in a much more containing way, so as to remain grounded in my present life. I somewhat forgot about the nourishing natural environment during my troubled adolescence – I’m sure this is pretty common though – and keeping pets around that time was not very successful. I have now returned to the outdoors and our relationship feels so much more salubrious and symbiotic, as I consciously cherish every tree, leaf, flower, meadow, cliff… and the earth and elements in turn reflect my capacity for balance.
During December a few years ago, I dreamt about a cave with light at the other end. That day I had noticed the last leaves falling, the fluttering movement and also the drifting clouds, the motion of my walking feet, the cool breeze, and in contrast – the stillness. I remembered the vivid red leaves of autumn. I took photos of Nomar lying in the sun and thought about fire. Since then, I have lit a candle every night before bed as a symbol of each day ending, a time to stop and rest, but still with the comforting movement of the flames. January’s bright frosty walks led me to consider the importance of balancing light and dark and I took pictures of our shadows against the glistening ground. I looked forward to spring and the pink tree.
I began to explore what my relationship with my dog means. Am I projecting some aspect of myself onto him, I wondered. I considered various possibilities; a recognition that Nomar feels both like a parent and a child and sometimes a more equal companion, when he is running free off the lead and we are enjoying the space together. After my daughter was born, Nomar would patiently wait for his walk, lying on my feet while I fed her. He was my “constant positive presence” (2) in those early stages of sleep deprived, overwhelming, de-stabilizing parenthood. He looks after me and I look after him.
This led me to recall my childhood dog, Lucy, and during a walk I tentatively texted my mother to ask what she remembered about Lucy’s death. There was an article ‘Voice, trauma and voicelessness’ in Therapy Today (3) and the predominant theme that the voice can be affected or even disappear in response to bereavement; from the grief, shock and trauma. Lucy was always there throughout my early childhood, guarding the pram, waiting at the bottom of the stairs, uncomplicated and present. She died when I was 7.
Beck and Katcher (4) emphasise the emotional and developmental benefits of companion animal relationships and hence, there seems a complex nature to their loss (5). I think I have superfluous grief from childhood, perhaps it was not well held or contained (e.g. Winnicott; Bion; 6,7). The ultimate loss of course was the breakdown of my family, leaving our family farm and re-homing most of the animals. So many enriching relationships with animals and so much unspoken grief.
I do not always feel sad in the cemetery. My daughter joins us on lots of walks and we play hide-and-seek, or pretend we are on a bear hunt. The playfulness balances out the more sombre, unsettling, disturbing or intense feelings and memories that called to be processed on the swamp-dredging counselling course. In ‘The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist’, Adams (8) states, ‘it is almost a presumption that those of us who choose to become therapists are not people who have sailed through life.’ When I tried to express my struggles and fears as a new mother entering counselling training, a key person in my life said something along the lines of, ‘you seem to find this so much harder than other people do… I just seem to have sailed through life’. Enough said about that for now, I notice myself spiralling out of my body and shutting down with ice cold rage, my muscles tensing, my mind clouding over. Back to nature and the dog; ‘leaves, leaves, leaves… content among the crunchy colours’.
Some days we leave the cemetery and trudge along the river; juggling dog-walking and buggy pushing, without child in buggy of course. Said child instead brandishing large stick or climbing anything in sight. And me, attention pulled in several directions, trying not to crash into cyclists. An abundance of nature is sandwiched between the ongoing construction of new flats, and on the other side, industrial buildings and the dogs’ home. To my left, Clematis Vitalba (Old Man’s Beard) grows prolifically amongst many other plants I do not know the names of, and I see wagtails, moorhens, ducks, geese and cormorants. Word has it, there is also a heronry further along the river.
To my right, my eyes are drawn to graffiti and barbed wire and overflowing drains. In particular, there is some graffiti which reminds me of the first thing a counselling client said to me, ‘I feel like a fraud’. I also feel like this sometimes. Further along there is a graffiti ghost – to me it looks like a ghost anyway – which sparks my wavering memories of ghost encounters at my childhood farm. A few years ago, my mother told me that areas of the farm had been ‘exorcised’, yet I feel that my ghosts remain there and keep trying to drag me back with shadowy hooks. I did not properly say goodbye. My ambivalence about Herefordshire is undoubtedly associated with ‘unfinished business’ (e.g. Perls; 9). This is shifting all the time though, as I learn to create movement in my mind through imagery, as well as literally keeping my feet moving forwards.
Herefordshire is a beautiful county* and I always feel a pull to go back, yet the underlying sadness associated with the place often wells up and knocks me off course; as accessibly described in ‘The Presenting Past’ (10), one’s past is ever present, influencing the dynamics of all relationships; with self and others, throughout life. It feels safer and more grounding to process my sadness in Arnos Vale, closer to my current home. On one visit to my mother and step-father in Herefordshire, I read through Johnson’s companion animal chapter in ‘Listening to Less Heard Voices’, with Nomar lying on my feet as usual, and found this a comforting focus. I identified with the themes; the bond that can occur if a companion animal is present through periods of personal change or growth, a constant witness. Along with themes of self and enrichment, healing and transformation, identity and beliefs, and the tactile quality of the relationships. Physical closeness between people is complicated, especially if boundaries have been violated in the past, whereas touch with an animal often has a very different quality; ‘the contact… the cuddling and playing’ (said a participant of Johnson’s research).
I feel the theme of ‘presence’ is the most relevant for me, and included within this, the idea of filling the spaces and using the senses. Linking again to Rothschild; it is often when there is space that intrusive memories emerge from the depths. I now practise filling the much needed space, not with draining, introspective, disorientating rumination and intrusion, but with a more aware, outward connection to my present existence and environment.
Sable (11) claims that companion animals ‘…furnish a component of attachment that promotes well-being and security’, hence the lasting impact of their loss. Barrows (12) goes further to urge a new child development theory of an ‘ecological self’, encapsulating a sense of belonging to something larger than the nuclear family and the materialistic culture into which they are born. She writes, ‘The infant has an awareness not only of human touch… but of the touch of the breeze on her skin, variations in light and colour, temperature, texture, sound…’. Is this what I am re-connecting with? There were huge incongruences in my upbringing; a jarring between corporate materialism and striving for the ‘good life’, which dwindled over time, finally falling apart. I can’t deny the richness and resilience I have gained from these formative experiences of connecting with animals and the outdoors, yet it was a confusing concoction all the same. Jordan (13) argues that for many, there is an ambivalent attachment to nature. I think my ambivalence is more to do with people, including myself.
I take videos whilst walking in the rain and search for any comfort I can find in the outdoors, anything solid to hold onto to settle my mind and gut, as I continue to tackle the emotional demands of both counselling training and learning how to be a parent. Maybe lots of people stay indoors and get cosy when it’s raining. I assume this because there are fewer people about. But I have to go out and so does my dog. On one day, this was the best I could come up with, ‘The leaves on the ground are all turning to mulch…like what’s happening in my mind’. I relate the potential and fertility of the ‘mulch’ to qualitative research; trusting that it will bring new life to something that may seem murky and inaccessible at first, with no clear paths through it, that I might slip and fall on my arse now and then and I can pick myself up and keep going, holding onto some branches along the way.
I notice magical, shiny droplets on the exposed winter branches and imagine they are miniature glass houses for fairies. I also realise that the birds still sing when it’s raining. There is a different kind of beauty and comfort on a rainy day, I would be missing out if I stayed indoors.
*Just to add in relation to Herefordshire, for those into walking, I recommend exploring the Black Mountains, even if just to say you have walked along the ‘Cat’s Back’ or climbed ‘Lord Hereford’s Knob’.
© 2021 Psychodography Blog
REFERENCES
- Rothschild, B. (2010) 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery: Take-charge Strategies to Empower Your Healing. W.W. Norton. New York. London.
- Johnson, J.J. (2015) ‘The experiences of pet owners’ well-being gained through their relationships with their companion animals’ in Listening To Less-Heard Voices: Developing Counsellors’ Awareness, edited by Peter Madsen Gubi.
- Dennett-Short, T. (2016) ‘Voice, Trauma and Voicelessness’, Therapy Today, 14-17.
- Beck, A.M. and Katcher, A.H. (1996) Between Pets and People. The importance of animal companionship. (Revised Edition). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
- Stewart, C.S., Thrush, J.C., & Paulus, G. (1989) Disenfranchised bereavement and loss of a companion animal: Implications for caring communities. In K. J. Doka (Ed.). Disenfranchised Grief. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books.
- Winnicott, D. (1960). The theory of the parent-child relationship, Int. J. Psychoanal., 41:585-595.
- Bion, W. (1962). Learning From Experience. London: Karnac Books.
- Adams, M. (2014) The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist: Private life, professional practice. Routledge.
- Perls, F.S. (1969) Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Moab, UT: Real People Press.
- Jacobs, M. (1986) The Presenting Past. London: Harper and Row.
- Sable, P. (2013) The Pet Connection: An Attachment Perspective. Clinical Social Work Journal, 41: 93-99.
- Barrows, A. (1995) The Ecopsychology of Child Development. In T. Roszak, Gomes, M. & Kanner, A. (Eds) Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind.
- Jordan, M. (2009) Nature and Self – An Ambivalent Attachment? Ecopsychology, 1 (1), 26-31.
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