Miranda's Story - Part 1

Here is an account of a woman who worked with me for around four years. She literally asked me to tell her story a long time ago if I thought it may help someone. People are generous like that.

Part 1

She walked through the door full of energy and cuteness. She was just turning thirty and she had been studying childcare. She was looking for a job preferably at a day care centre but had not been successful and wondered why. In the meantime she worked a night shift at a busy all night pharmacy as a shop assistant.

She lived with her Mother, saw her father from time to time, had one sister and was in a relationship with a man 15 years older than her.

At thirty, she seemed very young, coquettish. She was very beautiful in a sweet young girl kind of way.

She was here to see me because of her difficult sex life she said. Her partner was tired of their sexual incompatibility. Their relationship was falling apart. She felt it was her fault and she wanted to change that. She had moved back home with her Mother for a while but was still in the relationship with her partner Steve.

The problem Miranda said, had been there since the beginning with Steve. When they had sex she could not achieve orgasm and they together had tried everything to help her. I was to be her last hope.

“So what happens when you cannot achieve orgasm?” I asked

”I usually end up feeling angry because of the frustration. Some times we seem to go for hours. Then I have to ask Steve to stop and then I get really angry. I feel frustrated and let down. Steve always tries to calm me down. I cry a lot.”

“So do you try different methods?” I asked her.

“Yes, everything. We have even been to counselling.”

“Did that help?”

“Not really but the counsellor gave us a lot of ideas about what to do, kind of technical things”

We discussed all of the different ways they had tried for Miranda to experience the release into orgasm. She told me, “they even tried watching porn”. She was very embarrassed about that. Miranda had never had a physical medical check up and I suggested it was a good idea to do that even if it were only to delete the possibility that, there was a physical component to her problem. She said she felt there was nothing wrong physically and I tended to agree with her but left the suggestion with her.

When she had convinced me that she and Steve had worked consistently to address this really devastating problem, I told Miranda that there was really only one way to look at the situation in order to help her further. I suggested since she was often enough easily sexually aroused it would be reasonable to assume that some underlying mental or psychological problem was probably the cause of the inability to release into orgasm.

“Well, I wasn't sexually abused.” she said emphatically as though some kind of accusation was about to be aimed at her.

“Were you asked about sexual abuse during counselling?” I asked her.

“Yes, I was,” she said “and it made me very angry.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate the thought of that. Just because I can’t have an orgasm everyone thinks I have been sexually abused."

“Like whom?” I asked.

“Well, my sister for one.” she said. “And two girlfriends!”

“So you feel judged?” I offered.

“Yes,” she said “as though it’s not bad enough. I feel so grossed out that anyone would think that of me”

I explained to Miranda that psychological problems could mean anything, like anxiety, deep fears, even anger, nothing to do with sexual abuse necessarily.

What I did not tell her was that there were many signs in her behaviour, her way of being that suggested something had happened to her, probably bordering on the threat of sexual abuse, or the threat of male domination, definitely something to do with the opposite gender.

So in ending the initial session I gave her a brief outline of the things we may do and look at in order to help her understand herself more because she herself, her mind, was the only block to orgasm. She left feeling a little hopeful and as is usual I made no further appointment and assured her we could work together to at least bring about a deeper understanding about herself and her inability to orgasm. I told her she should wait a few days, see how she felt about me and whether we could work together. She said she already felt good

.

“OK, good” I said. “If you still feel the same in a few days give me a call”.

She did and we started weekly sessions immediately. I knew I could help her.

T

he great thing about being a therapist with many years experience is that a deep insight is automatically there when one meets a new person for therapy. There is no great skill, nor is there any specific detail within the insight. I have no hesitation in letting that sense guide me, though. Very quickly the sense I have is shown to come from a genuine knowing. It is an acquired ability and I think makes all the difference to the therapy.

For Miranda I saw many signs. One was her coquettish child like overly sexualised appearance and demeanour. Another was a sense that she was desperate to overwhelm me in order to hide something – at that moment mainly herself.

In our first few sessions Miranda was keen to talk about her life as she was presently living it so I could see that from our initial meeting there was already some kind of shift in her to trust me somewhat. I peppered the sessions with a lot of questions about family background, childhood experiences and memories but her main focus was her relationship with Steve, her studies and her money earning job.

This turned out to be quite a pleasant time for Miranda. She enjoyed my interest in her.

At the same time the situation with Steve did not improve. Miranda would often stayed over in the apartment they had shared previously. This was always fraught because of Miranda’s continuing problem with their sexual life. So, I waited for her as she remained fully immersed in the attachment she had to Steve. She told me over and over that the sex did not work out yet again. She was trying to relax and de-focus from the orgasm issue but she still felt angry and frustrated. I suggested she abstain from actual penetration type sex so that the intimacy and relaxed feeling became the focus for them but she felt she could not possibly deny Steve ‘his sex’. She was practicing muscle tension and relaxing in the pelvic region so that the blood flow was increased. She was not happy about masturbation. She said that it was the same as sex with Steve. She just ended up feeling tense and frustrated. She also had a revulsion about male or female masturbation. She said it 'just felt wrong’. So she went around and around through different phases of trying different techniques and tactics all of which she had tried before she came to see me. It was almost impossible to get her to de-focus from the orgasm issue partly because she was obsessed about it as a personal issue, a much desired achievement, and partly because she feared losing her man.

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I kept bringing her to talk about her developmental years and although not exactly reluctant, she was not that interested.Then something changed. There was one session where she had gone to visit her Father who had left her Mother when Miranda was in her mid twenties. She had a real fondness for her Dad and I figured that she had probably been quite close to him. She was not very close to her Mother and feared her very much. Her Mother was close to her sister. Miranda told me her mother and sister were more like two sisters and claimed it did not bother her. She never remembered feeling jealous about that.

Miranda had not seen her Father for a few months and she wanted to talk about the visit. She said that when she arrived at his apartment he looked weird, like he had been drinking or something. She said he didn't seem like his usual self. They started talking and he was a bit argumentative. She had a sudden realisation. He was exactly the same as he had always been but she had changed. She felt confused and disoriented and it scared her. She left after a couple of hours and had tried not to think about it. She found it impossible to stop the feelings of confusion and hoped that I could help her work out what was going on. Of course I could not immediately but I sure had some ideas in mind. I began asking a lot of questions. The questions were all about her childhood with her Father, how he was with her Mother since I knew that their marriage had ended, but mainly about what it was like to be his daughter. Miranda was very proud of her Father because he had been successful in business and had provided for her family well.

As we talked I sensed that Miranda was very nervous. There was definitely something amiss about her Father from my point of view. She said he was very affectionate toward her but then also commented that she was very affectionate back to him.

“Do you mean nowadays or just when you were a child?” I asked

“Just as a child.” she answered.

“And was that the same for your sister at any point?”

“No, I was a daddy’s girl.”

“So during this latest visit even though you felt uncomfortable did you feel any affection toward your Father?”

“No, not at all.”

“Do you usually these days?”

“Not like I used to.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No, he is not the same as he used to be. He doesn't like me being with Steve.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He thinks he is too old for me. We have argued about that.”

“Do you think he is a bit jealous?”

“He could be.” she answered.

“I think he probably is.” I said

Miranda was a bit surprised.

“How much older than Steve is your Dad?”

Miranda worked it out to be only 13 years. She was quite surprised. I told her that sometimes when the man a daughter chooses is not of the age to be able to be his son (in other words her Father could not have had a child at 13) then the age gap is not very big and for a Daddy’s girl, maybe her Dad is a bit jealous or just unable to accept a man nearer his age having a relationship with his daughter. She got that and said that a lot of the way her Father is would bear that out. During the latest visit Miranda let her Father know that although she had moved back with her Mother she was still having a relationship with Steve. She said that, thinking back, maybe right at that point he changed toward her. She had never given a thought that he might be jealous. She thought that was 'disgusting’.

She became very anxious. She said a lot about how close they had always been and when I talked further I found out that Miranda and her Father had slept together in the same bed very often. That was because her Mother worked on night shift as a nurse sometimes. She would go to her parents bed because she would always wake up, she said. Sometimes he was drunk and he snored. She remembered things like that.

For that session I said no more.

When she returned the next week I had decided to find out more about the sleeping arrangements. I was surprised Miranda opened up about it. She said that she always thought it was a bit weird that she slept with her Father but nothing sinister ever happened.

“No, probably not,” I said, “well not of a sexual nature anyhow”. “Did you go straight to sleep when you got into your parent’s bed?” I asked.

She answered in the affirmative but then told me that sometimes she would go straight to her parents’ bed if her Mother had left early for work.

“So were you awake when your Dad came to bed?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“Did you talk?”

“No, but sometimes he would get me to scratch his back or sort of massage him.”

“What position did you both sleep in?”

“He usually had his back to me and sometimes we would ‘spoon’.”

When I heard of the spooning I had to tell Miranda that this fact alarmed me. I thought it would be important to explore whether there had been any sexual contact along with the intimacy.

It took many sessions for this phase to be sorted through. Miranda was more relieved than anxious. She was worried she had done something wrong. I assured her time and again that as an innocent child aged six to thirteen there was not a thing she could have done wrong. At the same time I was not so sure about her Father. Miranda herself became very interested in what I had to say. She was very interested to explore every detail of what I was putting to her. I told her that even if there were never any sexual overtones to her Father’s behaviour, there was definitely an element of her, as a child, being used for an adult’s comfort. I put the emphasis on ‘used’. I explained everything to her about the results of being used to replace the absent parent, in this instance a working Mother. It happens a lot when children reside in the split between their Parents. They are often used to fill up the space of the missing partner. Sometimes that is just as a friend an companion. This can often cause an underlying anger in the child but there is no consciousness about it, often not in the parent either. Once we were underway with this exploration Miranda understood very well. She did agree that the more she thought about it the more she could see that it was not right for her Father not to encourage her to go back to her own bed since this sleeping arrangement became a habit, a habit she relied on and maybe her Father did also. It was something that happened four or five times a week for a number of years. Eventually she was very angry about it. She felt kind of weird and dirty at times and also confused. She didn't like seeing her Father whilst this whole process was going on so she avoided him. Also during this time she asked Steve to take a break from the relationship for a while. This helped Miranda as the orgasm issue was fast moving onto the back burner. She kept the warmth between them and Steve said he would wait for her, whatever it took.

I was often surprised at how well Miranda was dealing with all of the information and exploration. Sometimes she was extremely tired but we both put it down to her night work and course studies, let alone the work she was doing with me.

And then it all changed!

Miranda rang me quite distressed and said she did not want to talk by phone. She asked to see me so I gave her an emergency appointment and she arrived at my room … devoid of coquettish, devoid of prettiness. She was very distressed. She cried and felt embarrassed but said she felt very relieved to be with me. She wished she could stay forever because I was the only person who understood her. She said she was in big trouble. I thought it would be Steve, her Father or some issue with the law. Well, it was none of that.

Between fits of crying and long silences this is what Miranda said.

“There is something I haven’t told you and last night I had a very bad experience with a client.” “A client? You mean a customer.”

“No, a client. You see, I have not been telling you the truth. I work as an escort at a place (she named the suburb). I don’t work at a pharmacy. Everyone thinks I do. Where I work is not really a brothel. It is kind of an escort agency.”

I asked her to pause. I was shocked and I told her so. What I really told her was that I was not shocked that she had been deceitful. That was nothing compared to the fact that she was having to do that kind of work. I showed her my feelings of concern for her deeply from my heart. She was a bit confused but she did allow herself to take some of my response in. She went on to tell me her whole history of being an escort. She started very young and she worked for what she described as a high class upmarket agency. Her clients were meant to have been well known business men, professionals. She loved it. She was given a lot, including expensive gifts. She was taken to many interesting amazing places. She mostly liked the exciting life style. The only people who knew she did this kind of work were her friends at the agencies. She had often taken breaks but was always drawn back to the agency work because of the money and life style… a story, interestingly enough, I had come across numbers of times before with women in therapy.

“Those were the great days,” she said,” but now I have had to take work at the agency where it was more like well … umm … mostly hand relief for men.” My heart dipped. I felt so much for this poor child /woman before me. She was sad and worried.

The night before, a client she was assigned to, recognised her and she recognised him. He was a friend of her Father’s and she had been just a little girl when she first knew him. She had seen him very few times in her adult years but he was a good friend of her Fathers. My heart sank as she went on. I was seeing the twelve year old. She looked just like a twelve year old girl. She could hardly talk. She was very anxious, deeply distressed. I went to her chair and gently put my hand across her shoulder. She used many tissues. She was talking real fast and crying real fast. She calmed herself at one point to continue the story but she couldn't say any more.

“So what happened with this guy?” I asked.

“I just did my job with him.” she howled and sobbed.

She was distraught, in terrible agony. I could say very little. I just kept my full attention on her feeling the pain she was in, caring for her, just meeting her in the pain. That is all I could do. Luckily I had given her an appointment outside of my usual hours so I could stay with her for as long as she needed. She felt so ashamed. She wished she could die. She expressed every bit of pain that came up. She felt she could not face life ever again. She hated herself for having lived a lie. She expressed herself every now and then for at least an hour. After that I took my position back in my chair and we talked.

I convinced her that it was not the worst thing in the world that could happen. Maybe the guy would keep that story to himself for the rest of his life. Maybe he could never admit to anyone that he went to the place in order to have sex. He would be very unlikely to admit it to her Father, I told her. She could see my point. Apart from her disgust at herself, that is what worried her most. Miranda could not bear the feeling of her Father knowing. Then, she said, her life would be finished. Everyone would know. Along with her grief. Miranda was quite relieved to have come out with the truth. In that initial session she released herself from enormous guilt.

Before she left the session I told Miranda that it was very important to realise that this man had been very irresponsible in going through with the service she provided because of the fact that he knew her. We could not and should not blame him because he had a prepaid contract for the service but from a human perspective I thought it was quite cruel of him to go through with receiving what he wanted from her.

For a short while I saw Miranda for some extra sessions to help her come through the crisis. She did quite well in managing her mind. She never went back to her position at the brothel. She gave her notice to her employer immediately after the initial session and found some casual work doing menial jobs for a while, no more menial than the job she had been doing we laughed at one point.

Miranda did get laughing again but it took some time for her to feel steady enough to do some deeper work with me and also to sort out how she was going to build a career in the child care industry. She continued to avoid seeing her Father.

At one point Miranda said her Father had rung her and asked her to go to dinner with himself and a woman he had met because he wanted her to meet his new beau. Miranda was angry. She did not want to meet him, or her.

”I understand you doing that. So what do you actually feel ?" I asked.

"I don’t know.” she said.

“I just feel angry and grossed out.”

I did not express my opinion about it but I felt it was an opportune time to look at Miranda’s closeness with her Father. At the same time Miranda was starting to wonder and think about why she felt uncomfortable with her Mother.

Miranda decided not to meet her Father and I decided to investigate the fact that there may have been some feelings and thoughts for Miranda to explore. I reintroduced the fact that when a child is in need of care and closeness from a Father who goes to bed, often drunk with his young daughter expecting and wanting to have company and human touch it gets to be lived out psycho-dynamically the wrong way around. Parents’ needs take priority over the needs of the child. We explored how Miranda really felt. She was finally able to look at the truth of the matter more closely. She realised that the feelings arising strongly about her Father at this present time quite likely belonged to the time she was in bed with him over those numbers of years. She really understood experientially that she had been tending to her Father's needs when in actual fact she was the one in need of her Father's care and love. Her Mother was absent and very often tired after long hard shifts working in a hospital. She had Miranda's sister as her friend and her Father had her as his 'friend'. She connected the feeling of anger with how she missed out on getting her own needs met during those years. The real discontent and anger came about from the two fold dynamic. Not only was she not having her needs met but along with that she had to meet the needs of her Father. This I explained to Miranda was a very common cause of pain, anguish and anger experienced and lived out later in later life by many people. She was relieved to hear that it was experienced by others as well. It made her feel a little more 'normal' rather than some kind of 'weirdo, that being the term she used.

One day Miranda sought my advice about asking her Mother what she knew and how she felt about what had happened during those years. I said I did not think it was a great idea. It would open up an issue that would disturb her Mother and she needed to take that into account. I also warned her of the possibility of her Mother blaming her for some kind of indiscretion for even having asked the question. She had not thought of that. She seemed to have made a decision deep inside herself and we left it at that.

In the meantime Miranda was doing quite well in her studies and earning enough money to exist on. At the same time she was maturing, changing. We did many sessions where she explored the feelings she was having about her Father. She felt ‘bad’ about herself. This did not quite fit the whole picture as Miranda had explained it and I was concerned about the possibility that there was a sexual undertone to what had happened. I reminded her of the time when we talked about her non orgasmic sex life and how she felt very ‘grossed out’ that people may think she was sexually abused. She seemed to have an underlying belief that a child could play a part in the abuse. I explained how common this was and that I had detected it in her. I was adamant about this never ever being true. The child is NEVER to blame and NEVER the cause of a parents’ indiscretions or faults. Miranda let out such a deeply held breath I then knew I was on the right track. Whether her Father was sexual with her or in her presence or not, somehow she had carried a burden of guilt and revulsion. Something released in her that day It was something she had carried in her deep unconscious and she felt immediately happier to have talked about it. She was much, much happier around that time of her therapy. Even Steve was back in favour for a very short time.

Then another big event came about. Miranda was being a bit more friendly with her Mother as she went along in her therapy. She decided to go ahead with her urge to ask her Mother about the issue of sleeping in their bed with her Father. She sat with her one night and asked her Mother some questions. She asked her if she remembered how, when she was out nursing at nights she would sleep in her parents’ bed. She said her Mother looked sheepish immediately and that frightened her. Her Mother immediately explained that she often felt guilty and worried about it. Miranda enquired further. She told Miranda a life changing story from which Miranda had to spend a long time recovering. She told her that she felt guilty working because she did not feel one hundred percent confident that it was ‘safe’ for Miranda but she had to work. She had managed to put those thoughts right out of her mind as often as possible. Poor Miranda was shocked, afraid of what might come next and it did. Her Mother told her that when she had met her Father he had made a confession to her that at age twenty one he had had an inappropriate connection with a child who was close to the family. Her Mother was rather vague on the details but the outcome was that he was worried that something was wrong with him because of his attraction to the child and that he had kissed her and touched her genitally on two occasions. He was drunk both times. Her Mother told Miranda that as far as she knew there was never any further problem. She had always wondered way in the back of her mind whether her Father, especially as he was often drunk had ‘done anything to her” or her sister. Miranda assured her Mother he had not and told her that nonetheless she was angry at having been left in his care. He was often drunk and was incapable of looking after her. She was upset that as a very young child she felt she had been left to take care of him. Her Mother was quite understanding and even apologetic, Miranda said, and she felt a little of her Mother’s warmth. Miranda was very relieved her Mother did not defend her Father or herself. She felt they became a little closer at that point.

Miranda brought this immediately to her session. I was so happy for her and her Mother that she did not blame or accuse her Mother of anything. I was very relieved to know that her Mother did not blame her in any way. On the other hand Miranda was very, very distressed about her Father. She fell into great doubt about him. She was in shock, traumatised and very fearful. She had to spend many sessions anguishing about whether to confront her Father. Once she had heard the story from her Mother it was very understandable that huge doubt had set into her mind. Miranda was left to weigh up the affect on her if she were to open up such a contentious issue as this. Sometimes she was compelled to go ahead and confront her Father. Other times she felt it was unnecessary, that she didn’t want to open up to him in that way. She was often very confused. Throughout this period Miranda was also very sad, often angry, always somewhat afraid.

During a particularly important session Miranda challenged me to make the decision for her. I could see how she was transferring the need of her Mother’s protection onto me. Would I betray her?

“Really”, she said, “Go on, you make the decision”.

“That is not a decision I can make.” I said, “but what I can do is tell you what is likely to happen if you do go ahead and confront your Father.”

“I don’t care any more. I am going to go and see him right after this session.”

“OK” I said. “This is something you want to do. You have every right and I support it totally. I think I should warn you of what may happen. I am on your side and you should know that there is a high risk of a complete severance of your relationship with your Father.”

She agreed,” I don’t care. This is me. This is my life. I want to get this out of the way. I have already let go of him.”

“OK” I said,” There is one other thing. He may be very, very angry with you and in such shock he will have many excuses and answers that will not help you. That is the risk on the other side. You need to be very clear about your intention. What do you intend getting from seeing him?”

“That is very easy,” she said,”I am going to get him to own up to what he did and to be honest.”

“Sorry Miranda. If you hold that as your intention you are very likely to fail. That could be disastrous for you. You do not have the power to get him to be truthful. He will not handle it. He certainly will not own up. Your motivation we understand very well, but you have to come up with an intention that has a greater possibility of success for you”.

Miranda decided to wait… but she couldn't.

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