“I have always been braced against the world, always been anticipating the worst. And perhaps that ‘always’ is why I never realised that this perspective might not be normal. One’s experience is total, until an opportune moment allows you to step outside of it and see and feel something different. For me, this has been so rare, that I could count the times I have been lucky enough to not be scared on the fingers of one hand, and perhaps at a push, my toes. It is worth highlighting for me being scared exists on a spectrum, perhaps vigilant is a better word. When this is a person’s default mode everything carries threat, from the obvious, to a certain word, to a certain look or a certain tone. Being in the world in this way is tiring. Unsurprisingly, eventually it can’t be ignored. My experience of trying to resolve this, or a better way of saying it is ‘changing’ has failed. Familiar to most I have tried a lot with very little progress.
My previous experience of lengthy and deep therapy left me worse, talking therapy, for me, led to an overintellectualizing of my experience, bringing things to the fore that were then just left with me. To have again, and to be terrified by again. And this is what leads me to Lilian’s work. I am skeptical but I believe in therapy, or maybe I am just desperate. I have had four sessions, and I accept I am a long-term project, but I would briefly like to outline my work with Lilian. First off, probably connected to previous experiences, I am deeply skeptical, or maybe scared to hope for success (which is maybe threatening itself), being uncluttered and unencumbered doesn’t feel quite right.
You may be interested in the protocol. There is a focus on a symptom, a sensation, which you are asked to give shape to through imagery, story or metaphor. What follows is a guided embrace of what ails you, explored together so that the narrative arc is completed. Lilian has quite an astonishing skill for guiding this process. She is able to intuit, very quickly, what may resolve ‘the story.’ You are probably saying, yes but does it work? All I can say is that after every session I am afforded a window of calm, where I sleep better and have more energy, where I come back to parts of myself, I have forgotten, and l am comfortable, sometimes delighted to be there. Of course, there’s always a stack of further issues waiting, but they seem more manageable, maybe start looking more like avenues that are exciting to explore, opportunities to heal. I would say for me, the real acid test is I always look forward to speaking to Lilian and being taken to those places. As a perennial avoider this is something that no other modality has ever done for me before. “
