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‘A windy day – shelter and support from the trees in Perrett Park.  Feeling overwhelmed again and need space.  Nomar has been needy, or trying to look after me, not sure… FOG… Intrusion… Little gaps of light poking through the clouds, little bits of space.’

Several times I have come across this FOG thing in my walking notes (above) and I cannot remember where it comes from but it stands for Fear, Obligation, Guilt (I think it was foggy in the park too though).  It reminds me of some of my family relationships.  It feels very heavy when I think about this, reflected by the weather, and the little bits of light are comforting as I frequent Totterdown’s parks.  Balancing light and dark is an ongoing theme in my therapy and with the clients I have seen on placement.  This comes into focus at Perrett Park; I often used to go there in the evening with Nomar, after my daughter had gone to sleep, to re-connect with him after work, to feel grounded again.  It helped me to have a bit of space at that time, especially if my mind was lingering on clients’ stories as well and I needed to let go of the day.  I took pictures of the sunset and the city lights (there is a fantastic view of the city from Perrett Park).  I love the slopes in the local parks and as the sun goes down, the tree shadows become elongated, reminding me of how warped memories and thoughts can become if left unchecked.

During one January’s frosty walks I photographed shadows in Arnos Park and also an abandoned pram.  It wasn’t really abandoned, the Dad was just further up the park, picking up his dog’s shit, but I left him out of the picture for effect.  

I wonder if the sense of isolation the picture evokes in me feels reminiscent of a similar feeling in childhood and my assumption (perhaps) that I felt emotionally disconnected in some way.  Little did I know just how isolating life would become in 2020. Can we experience a sense of self in isolation or can this only be achieved through connecting with others?  On the other hand, what we see in others and what we see of ourselves through others can become so distorted and foggy.  Yalom (1) has helped me come to a realisation about the significance of an experience I had the following February.  

This is what I wrote about the experience at the time: 

‘I hear frantic screeching and see two magpies enmeshed together.  Fighting or mating? I wonder.  This reminds me of our PD group facilitator saying, “are you fighting or fucking?  I mean metaphorical fucking of course”.  I said ‘metaphorical fucking’ would be a good name for a song or an album.  Anyway, I realise that one of the magpies has one foot tangled up in the furry feathers of the other magpie, in the place where its foot should have been.  So the second magpie only has one foot.  I grab them both in one fast and firm movement (instinctively from my farm days?) over the top of their iridescent wings, and try to assess the situation.  Nomar is barking and bouncing around and distressing the birds, so I put them down, tie his lead to a tree, and start again.  I manage to ease the tangled feathers off the other bird’s foot, whilst doing so their talons grip my fingers vehemently and their beady black eyes peer up at me.  Entangled together like that, they would not have survived I’m guessing.  The whole time I feel irritated that I am not focusing on the present moment in that profound experience of freeing those birds, instead I am thinking about one of the 13 toy animals I use in therapy to represent my ‘selves’; the penguin with one foot (my counsellor’s dog chewed off the other foot).  The wounded healer (Carl Jung).  The survivor?’

Yes, I was reminded of the wounded part of me by the magpie with one foot, although what I had not explored more fully was the enmeshment.  Yalom eloquently reflects on an interaction he observed between a long-term client and a fellow consultant, 

‘I am persuaded that, in these infatuating first meetings, Dan and the woman mistook what they each saw in the other.  They each saw the reflection of their own beseeching, wounded gaze and mistook it for desire and fullness.  They were fledglings with broken wings who sought to fly by clasping another broken-winged bird.  People who feel empty never heal by merging with another incomplete person.  On the contrary, two broken-winged birds coupled into one make for clumsy flight.  No amount of patience will help it fly; and, ultimately each must be pried from the other, and wounds separately splinted.’ (1)

There was no opportunity for me to splint the wounds of those two magpies after their independent flights into the trees.  Nevertheless, the prising apart of their entanglement gave me a deep sense of satisfaction.  It was not clear at first what was happening when they were so caught up with each other, it was distorted, unnerving, I doubted I could do anything to help or even if help was warranted or might be intrusive.  I soon realised, of course, that these birds had no way of helping each other and needed to be pried apart to survive.  With human relationships, this seems infinitely more complex and difficult to achieve.  I have often felt that pull towards, even into, other people’s experience.  They are usually people with particularly traumatic backgrounds.  I feel an instant, deep connection with some people, although simultaneously a wariness and instinctive sense that this is not good for me.  Unfortunately, I have ignored that instinct at times in my past and have had to learn the hard way, by experiencing the helpless dark pit of a gradually fading sense of self.  

The most caring and important thing my father and step-mother ever did for me was to help me wake up to a destructive relationship (when I was 19) and disentangle myself from it.  My mother then calmly and patiently helped me to clear up the ‘mess’ afterwards – sorting through, cleaning and moving out of my flat – an unpleasant experience emotionally as well as physically. I had started to see a counsellor for the first time in my life (at University) and she suggested I take my time clearing out the flat and notice how I was feeling. I realise now she was encouraging me not to dissociate. This was the very first step in my recovery. I haven’t always felt that my parents were there for me when I needed them, but that time… they saw I was at rock-bottom, they asked if I needed help and I will be forever grateful.

With clients, I ramp up the grounding techniques when I feel the pull.  Early on with one client I actually felt myself dissociating slightly during sessions and felt that her huge eyes were sucking me in, engulfing me.  I reinforced my awareness of my body against the chair, my feet on the floor, my hands resting on my belly, containing and protecting my sense of space and self.  Striving to maintain, as far as possible, solidity in connection.  This grounding practice is anchored further during some of my dog walks; I might lean against a large tree for a while, notice the rhythm of my walking, observe the solidness and softness of trees, with the hard branches and the ‘flossy willows’ (pussy willow) as my daughter likes to call them; deliberating over balance and collaboration (rather than co-dependency) in relationships, among humans, and between human and hound. 

In Victoria Park there is a willow tunnel.  I like to walk through it.  I consciously enter it from different ends on different days, just as I try to actively consolidate new pathways in my mind.  Sometimes Nomar runs through it with me and other times he is off doing his own thing, usually weaving around trees, looking and sniffing for sticks, his tail zigzagging in all directions.  We move apart and we come together, with synergy, unspoken (mostly), without effort, like a dance.  The willow takes me back to the farm and the old willow tree we had in the garden, which I used to sit under and ‘talk to the fairies’, apparently.  It seems I had a relationship with trees from a young age and it is no wonder that I now seek out their containing, awe-inspiring and nourishing comfort.  I have begun to bring the more magical aspects of childhood into my therapy, as the grief at leaving the farm lessens. 

It feels important now to share some of this, and to begin to think about what I might share about my childhood with my own daughter.  I wonder, also, how to start bridging the gap between my somewhat idealised childhood and my current adult life. Much of the pain is in-between. Very little about my childhood has been discussed by my parents since they broke up, at times it feels like it never existed and has taken on a sort of mythical quality.  The willow tree in the garden was cut down because the roots were too close to the house, where does that sit in my ‘tangled ball of grief’ (2)?

The first time I lived on my own, at age 18, my drinking problem was escalating. I experienced frightening, intrusive thoughts and images most nights and kept a baseball bat under my pillow. Somehow I got through my A Levels but didn’t achieve my predicted grades and therefore didn’t get onto my chosen degree course. I took a ‘gap year’ which involved staying in Hereford, getting whatever jobs I could, and after work – spending a lot of time in the pub drinking cider, eating pork scratchings and playing pool with older men, with their dogs as witnesses. I was especially fond of ‘Skippy’ the Whippet. I would later visit the 24 hour Tesco close to my flat on the way home from a nightclub.  As well as ‘munchies’, I would often buy plants in my drunken and stoned state and I remember once introducing a coconut plant to the willow tree on the roundabout, as I neared my flat.  I was with a friend and there was much hilarity generated by this midnight arboreal encounter.  At the same time though, and in hindsight of course, something deeper was at play.  Trees are considered sacred in many cultures and some humans have a sense that trees are sentient beings, emitting a vibrational energy upon contact, and through their deep roots, carrying powerful grounding energy.  Trees represent connection and cycles of life.  I pasted an article into my journal a few years ago about the history of Victoria Park (3) and circled the following section,

‘So many trees were planted that in 1907 the Bristol Ratepayers complained about the cost.  But the many limes, oak and plane trees have given the park its character, and whenever one has to be felled because of age or disease, people mourn or even protest at their loss.’ 

This post doesn’t feel finished… I keep coming back to it again and again. I can’t work out how to finish it. Maybe that’s the whole point? Although shouldn’t I be saying this for ‘Unfinished Business’?

© 2021 Psychodography Blog

REFERENCES

1. Yalom, I.D. (1991) Love’s Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy.  Penguin.
2. H. Norman Wright (2014) Experiencing the Loss of a Family Member. Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
3. South Bristol Voice (2017) The Story of Victoria Park, 30-33.

This is a dabble with psychodography; combining psychogeography and dog-walking.  An attempt at an autoethnographic study of self-discovery, trauma-recovery and balance, as a new counsellor negotiating a multiplicity of emotional demands.  I’d like to tell a story of mindfulness, movement and modulation with my dog as my steady companion and witness.  I’ve come to realise, this is perhaps a process of phenomenological inquiry. It is certainly experimentation and it was, initially, an interweaving of three main theoretical approaches which have influenced the process; Heinz Kohut’s Self Psychology (1,2), Jennifer Jane Johnson’s research into well-being gained through relationships with companion animals and Babette Rothschild’s Somatic Trauma Therapy.  These are some of the books I read whilst studying for my Counselling Diploma.

My connection with animals and the outdoors was an essential part of my ‘secure base’ as a child.  The grounding qualities of this sharply came into focus during the overwhelming expedition of training to become a counsellor at the same time as still being a relatively new mother.  Johnson suggests, ‘Factors in people’s lives that might provide a buffer, or relief to distress, are worthwhile investigating…the human-animal bond merits attention in counselling training, research and practice’.  During my training I inevitably had to face loss and trauma from my past and needed to learn how to dip into it in a manageable way so as not to become overwhelmed; putting into practice my mindful gauges and grounding tools by drawing from Rothschild’s ‘8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery’ (3). This has helped me to explore effective self-care techniques for me and experiment with various modes and methods of capturing my experiences out walking, with the “constant positive presence” (4) of my dog.  These all inform my pursuit of a healthy balance between re-visiting my past and staying grounded in the present, unearthing power from vulnerability and encountering what it might mean to belong.

I read a Psychogeography article by Chris Rose called ‘Walking Together’, in the BACP magazine, Therapy Today. This initially gave me the clarity I was seeking for the project I was embarking on.  From reading this, to then discovering the book ‘Walking Inside Out’ by Tina Richardson (5), I experienced a fresh nostalgia and jubilation when I read the chapter ‘Walking the Dog (For Those Who Don’t Know How to Do It)’ by Ian Merchant; set in my childhood county of Herefordshire.  In homage to the early 1950s Parisian Psychogeography movement, Merchant seeks to achieve an altered state of consciousness in his familiar surroundings, which he does by smoking a spliff – before walking his dog around the village.  For some, Psychogeography is focused on the local area, for others it is about exploring somewhere new without a plan or even necessarily a map. It is the perfect activity for me, because I love walking and I’m really good at getting lost! I don’t even need to smoke anything to help with the latter.

I realise there are others who share my penchant for documenting the qualities of dog-walking, or walking and talking, or simply walking.   I no longer assume that this is just a strange thing I am doing on my own; a familiar feeling as a child roaming the fields alone talking aloud. Or sometimes with my cat following me, until he found something more interesting to do, like guarding a rabbit hole.  

I have been inspired by and found some parallels with Devika Chawla. This was my first encounter with autoethnography and I highly recommend her captivating website, ‘Rhymes, Reasons, & Ramblings’.  In ‘Walk, Walking, Talking Home’ (6) she evokes such a rich sense of space, place, movement, contrast and loss, that I almost feel I can touch it.  Like me, she has also spent time in the United States and compares her walking experiences there, with those in her small north Indian home-town in the Himalayas. 

Experimenting with walking (and writing), and reading about others doing the same, has become a form of self-care and self-discovery for me. I’d like to emphasise approaches to trauma recovery, and self-care in general, which do not involve reliving the past; either in the form of intrusive thoughts or de-stabilizing interactions with a therapist or therapy/personal development group. It feels immensely important to further raise awareness of the risks around re-traumatisation for both counsellors and clients. 

I want to also highlight that mindful meditation does not have to involve sitting still; not helpful for everyone, as Rothschild accessibly explains in ‘8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery’.  These are steps towards personal integration, particularly in striving to soothe my internal urban/rural struggle, ambivalence about trust and intimacy, balancing vulnerability and power and yearning for a sense of ‘home’.  From at first plotting my course with mindfulness, using Rothschild’s ‘KEY 1’ as a guide, I have drawn further strength and resolve from ‘KEY 3: Remembering Is Not Required’ and crucially ‘KEY 7: Get Moving’. 

‘As we ‘walk alongside’ the client, we travel through internal landscapes of desired utopias and feared hells… to find new pathways through old and scarred territory.’ (7) It is new pathways that I pursue for myself, whilst co-creating new tracks through old terrain with clients, like sheep tracks trodden repeatedly into hillsides.  Long-term placement clients I worked with have courageously sought therapy for their battle with addiction and traumatic past. I am reminded of the ‘shaky ground’ Gerhardt (8) describes in ‘Why Love Matters’; the effects of too much cortisol in early life, the relationship between dopamine and processing of reward and punishment and how this is inextricably linked with drug-taking, or other self-soothing/self-harming strategies (9). One client was searching for ‘fresh footprints in the snow towards a safe, cozy cabin’. It was a privilege to witness this journey, walking alongside the client as much as I was able, and the vividly lucid image has stayed with me ever since.

Similarly to Rose’s article, my expedition draws together many things, the essence of which is relational.  Relationship with self, relationship with place, relationships with others; strengthened, re-considered, re-kindled, or new ones founded, through this new way, for me, of approaching self-development.  The ‘fresh nostalgia’ mentioned earlier is beautifully summed up by Rose; ‘Encountering psychogeography is simultaneously like greeting an old friend and discovering a stimulating, quirky, innovative and challenging new acquaintance.’  

To ‘Begin within’ (10) is to set the scene of my internal world and the journey I have enjoyed and endured and was necessary, for me to start stepping out – facing the world in all of its beauty and ugliness and everything in between. All of its challenge and struggle.

I want to thank my wonderfully creative and intuitive, integrative counsellor for fervently reflecting and re-reflecting my need for space, movement and quality time with my dog.

© 2021 Psychodography Blog

REFERENCES

1. Kohut, H. (1972) Thoughts on narcissism and narcissistic rage.  Psychoanal. Study Child 27:360-399.
2. Kohut, H. (1977) The Restoration of the Self.  New York: Int. Univ. Press.
3. Rothschild, B. (2010) 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery: Take-charge Strategies to Empower Your Healing. W.W. Norton.  New York.  London.
4. 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.  
5. Richardson, T. (Ed) (2015) Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography.  London: Rowman & Littlefield.
6. Chawla, D. (2013) Walk, Walking, Talking Home. Rhymes, Reasons, and Ramblings.  Retrieved from https://devikachawla.wordpress.com/
7. Rose, C. (2016) Walking Together, Therapy Today, 22-25.
8. Gerhardt, S. (2004, 2015) Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby’s brain.  London/New York: Routledge.
9. Aaronson, R. (2006) Addiction: This Being Human. Authorhouse.
10. Saad, L. (2020) Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World. Sourcebooks.

‘Psychogeography does not have to be complicated.  Anyone can do it.  You do not need a map, Gore-Tex, rucksack, or companion.  All you need is a curious nature and a comfortable pair of shoes.  There are no rules…’ (1)

So what is Psychodography?  I journeyed to the Jurassic Coast with my dog, anxious and guilty at leaving my two-year-old daughter – albeit with her capable and conscientious father – for the weekend, but with a ‘curious nature’ waiting in the wings… stayed in a VERY dog-friendly B&B; with a surprising field dedicated to dog agility training… found a dog-friendly (enough) pub for dinner… got back to the room and flicked through crap telly thinking about what the fuck I was doing there.  After a sea view breakfast I asked the host for a map of the area onto which she highlighted the closest circular walk… set off to find the sea, in my Gore-Tex coat and rucksack, with my canine companion, and promptly got lost.  After all… there are no rules.  

I began to record my voice with a Dictaphone. including shouting from the top of the cliffs; where I ended up after getting lost and after the dog had rolled in shit.  I felt safe and free enough in Dorset to start experimenting.  Listening back to my recorded counselling sessions in the preceding months had felt so excruciating at first that I decided to experiment with various ways of capturing my thoughts, feelings and experiences and get more used to listening back to my own voice.  I think this exercise has also become part of the movement I was seeking, a kind of emancipation of voice, and something I continue to do, on occasion, whilst dog-walking. 

To give a few examples of the content and my experience of listening back to it; I sound tentative and unsure, childlike, whilst the sound of my footsteps on the ‘crunchy November leaves’ seem much more assured.  Settling into the walk, I say with an exhale, ‘starting to feel the space now’.  I mention that the B&B lady’s lisp reminds me of my own lisp throughout childhood and being told of the more severe speech difficulties I had early on.  I am struck by the stifling frustration that surges in me when I do not feel understood or get stuck for words.  I am caught up in my thoughts.  And then notice my dog,

‘Aaah, Nomar’s standing up on the hill, on the silvery frosty grass… completely still, with his back leg… OH! He’s running (pause) he’s running he’s running he’s running towards me.  Hello! You looked magnificent!’

My voice is fast and I feel excited and happy listening to it, I notice the change in my speed and tone and focus reflecting the quality of my dog’s running and I now recall the fulfillment of wellbeing (there must be a better word than this!) in the experience of him running back to me.  

Extracts of the recordings include a louder, more urgent sounding voice, swiftly getting Nomar on the lead as we were passed on the cliffs by a running herd of sheep, and contrasting with my enthralled teenage sounding voice, with dropped consonants, as I recount the ‘lady farmer…bezzin’ past…on a quad bike’ and her three sheep-dogs running close to the ground alongside.  I have a rousing curiosity about powerful women… and the sheep are Badger-Face Welsh Mountain Sheep, which have long been favourites of mine.  They are striking and confident and seem very relaxed around dogs, Nomar came almost nose to nose with one.

I grew up on the border of Wales and we had sheep on our little farm.  In fact, I had a pet lamb called Sally who had been rejected by her mother.  I took her for walks on a lead around the village.  The black and white Badger-Face sheep has become one element of my ‘Configurations of Self’ (2) in therapy, representing my desire to ‘fit-in’ and be one of the crowd, but at the same time longing to feel secure in my difference and individuality.  

In the early stages of voice recording, I became aware of just how prevalent my inner critical voice still is, having spent many many hours and money in therapy working on this over and over again, over the years. Then the stark contrast between outwardly voicing what is going on in my head, compared with what I notice externally in my immediate environment in the moment, and how I feel in response:  A sort of self-directed phenomenological inquiry (e.g. Joyce and Sills, 3).  I have latterly steered towards the philosophical phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty to help inform this process and re-discovered Heidegger and Sartre.  Thank you James (dissertation tutor).  I experience many ‘Authentic moments’ walking with my dog, moments described by Heidegger as ‘those in which we are most at home with ourselves, at one with ourselves.’ (4) 

Back to powerful females: Another ‘Self’ I feel connected with is a girl with an eagle, inspired by a newspaper article about the documentary ‘The Eagle Huntress’ (5); about a 13-year-old Mongolian girl with a ‘near genius for working with the eagles’ even though the ‘elders grumble that women are too “fragile” for such an arduous business’.  I know nothing about hunting with eagles, but I do feel I have an affinity with animals and this brings out my courage, strength and assertiveness, in contrast to my (reducing) tendency to be passive, even submissive, with other humans.  I do have a ‘fragile’ Self too; a small frog with hidden emotions, defended, constantly adapting myself for others, often suffering in silence (or hiding in silence?).  I recall feeling completely powerless at times in the past, my boundaries traumatically invaded on occasion.  Yet, high up on the cliffs of the Jurassic Coast, I connect with that courageous girl, at one with her powerful companion animal.  Vulnerable out in the open, safe with my dog.

As I relaxed into the weekend, I recorded less of my voice and more of the sounds of walking; on the crunchy leaves, grass, pebble beaches, paddling in the sea and the lovely contrast between my somewhat dogged – pardon the pun – footsteps, and Nomar’s whimsical padding around all over the place.  After this, I sounded much calmer on the voice recordings, with no conflict, no judgement.  

I accidentally recorded my whole journey home – the Dictaphone left on in my pocket; the final walk back to the B&B, packing up the car, driving and singing along to 90s rock and grunge, getting back to an empty house. Then… the murmur of the radio, the click of the kettle, and shortly after, my husband and daughter arriving home from the park and the heart-warmingly familiar greetings between us all; aware more than ever of the gratitude and comfort these small details evoke, of what it means to be ‘home’. 

I recall an article, ‘the healing power of the ordinary’ by Gretchen Schmelzer (6), with a picture of a sleeping dog and a basket of laundry.  It is about trauma recovery and the healing power of everyday, ordinary experiences and seems to fit with the ‘ordinary, everyday, experience’ of a ‘phenomenological approach’ (7).  

Daily routine and rituals, including walking the dog of course, have become integral to me staying within the ‘window of tolerance’ (8).  Schmelzer also writes about the courage of parenting with a history of trauma; meeting your own voice; the ‘healing fog’.  I also came across, ‘Trauma makes you live in ‘backwards world” and wonder if this is why walking forwards feels so important.  It sometimes feels like an upside down world for me too.

© 2021 Psychodography Blog

REFERENCES

1. Richardson, T. (Ed) (2015) Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography.  London: Rowman & Littlefield.
2. Mearns, D. & Thorne, B. (2007) Person-Centred Counselling in Action (3rd ed.). London: Sage.
3. Joyce, P. & Sills, C. (2014) Skills in Gestalt Counselling and Psychotherapy (3^rd Ed).  Sage. 
4. Moran, D. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology.  New York: Routledge.
5. Macnab, G. ‘The Eagle Huntress’. Review of The Eagle Huntress, directed by Otto Bell. The Independent, Dec. 2016.
6. Schmelzer, G. (2014, 2016) http://gretchenschmelzer.com/ 
7. Silverman, D. (2010) Qualitative Research (3^rd Edition).  London, UK: Sage Publications.
8. Siegel, D. (2009) Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation. NSW Australia: Scribe Publications.

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.  

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 *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

1. Rothschild, B. (2010) 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery: Take-charge Strategies to Empower Your Healing. W.W. Norton.  New York.  London.
2. 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.  
3. Dennett-Short, T. (2016) ‘Voice, Trauma and Voicelessness’, Therapy Today, 14-17.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Winnicott, D. (1960). The theory of the parent-child relationship, Int. J. Psychoanal., 41:585-595.
7. Bion, W. (1962). Learning From Experience. London: Karnac Books.
8. Adams, M. (2014) The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist: Private life, professional practice. Routledge.
9. Perls, F.S. (1969) Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.  Moab, UT:  Real People Press.
10. Jacobs, M. (1986) The Presenting Past.  London:  Harper and Row.
11. Sable, P. (2013) The Pet Connection: An Attachment Perspective.  Clinical Social Work Journal, 41: 93-99.
12. Barrows, A. (1995) The Ecopsychology of Child Development. In T. Roszak, Gomes, M. & Kanner, A. (Eds) Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind.
13. Jordan, M. (2009) Nature and Self – An Ambivalent Attachment? Ecopsychology, 1 (1), 26-31.