Vigilance

Supervision. I brought the one about the husband and the letter — not the content, the fact that it went through me — and Priyanka listened to the whole thing without moving, and then used the word vigilance. She used it about the client. She said something like, what you are describing in her sounds like vigilance rather than anxiety, they look the same from outside and they are not the same thing, anxiety is about what might happen and vigilance is about what already did. And I had a physical reaction to the word that I do not think she saw. Something in my sternum. I kept my face completely still, which is a skill I have, and I said yes, that is a useful distinction, and we carried on with the case. We stayed on the client for the remaining twenty minutes. I let us stay on the client. That was a choice I made at the moment the word landed, and I made it fast, before I had consciously decided anything. Writing this up now at my desk between the eleven and the twelve and I can feel myself wanting to make it smaller. The honest version is: a word was said about somebody else, it described me exactly, I recognised it instantly, and I steered. The thing about vigilance is that it is adaptive. That is the whole point of it. It is not a malfunction, it is a system that learned something once and has not been given a reason to stand down. I would say that to a client in exactly those words, and I would say it kindly, and I would mean it. I have a four o'clock and then the week is done.

I would have had to say out loud, to a supervisor, in a professional setting, that I check my fiancé's bank statements. And the second I say it in that room it stops being a private oddity and becomes a thing about my relationship that somebody else knows. I am not ready for it to be that. Which I recognise is the same move the client is making. I am aware. Thank you.