Suddenly, I’m transported back 46 years, feeling everything as if I were 23 again
First published in ILLUMINATION 29/09/24 John Walter 📣Therapy and creativity
I am looking at my soon-to-be ex-wife. I don’t recognise her. She is describing a pain I have never heard before. The therapist gives her space to explain what is wrong in the relationship. The words seem connected to me but somehow from another dimension. I am sure there is truth in them, and I feel such sadness that they must be true.
The therapist turns to me. What are my feelings? I have no idea. I’m 23, completely lost in this moment. I am like a rabbit in the headlights. What am I supposed to say? What would someone normal say in this position? Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck am I?
I carefully craft a response as I have trained myself to do. Part of me is completely calm, and I begin to observe myself interacting with two other people in the room. I seem to be doing okay. I look sad but engaged. I look as if I am a part of this drama. My voice is calm and measured.
They don’t know that a part of me is surviving this ordeal by sidestepping away silently without leaving my chair. I am observing myself at a safe distance. Who is this person calmly reciting lines I am feeding to them? Saying things that will make me seem like I belong here?
But inside, I’m not here at all. I’m lost. I’m 23, and I don’t know how I got to this place, this moment, this marriage, this therapy room. I know this chaos is churning inside of me, and I know I can survive it like a puppeteer pulling strings and feeding lines.
The screen fades, and the faces of 40 people jolt me back into the present. My personal time machine abruptly ejects me into my office chair, and for a trice, I am disoriented, trying to ground myself in the moment.
The tutor is asking for feedback on the role-play I just participated in. I check back in with myself. I am back in my 69-year-old body, shocked at having just spent 20 minutes time-travelling. I had no warning this would happen, and I am committed to being part of this couples counselling course as authentically as I can.
I press the unmute button.
“Feedback from me is that I got triggered. I was married at 19 and divorced at 23, and the imagined scenario resonated too much with my own experience. I will be booking an extra session with my personal therapist.”
What just happened?
I emailed my therapist directly, with questions rolling around my head.
What was that? Why did it happen? Can I time-travel?
I got an appointment for the next day. I knew if I didn’t speak to her, it would disappear and bubble away in the background of my life until it was triggered again.
Whatever it was, it had been deeply hidden for 46 years. I had never spoken about my first wife in therapy, disregarding it as something I had dealt with—no use ruminating on the past.
Reflections of Youth
By the time I was 19, I had shared intimate moments with several girlfriends. I remember sitting in my mother’s car, staring out at the ocean, lazing away a sunny afternoon hidden in sand dunes, or sitting in my little den listening to Pink Floyd, trying to get as much contact as we could with our clothes on.
But the girl who became my wife was the first to take the time and care to spend a night with me and help me shake off my virginity.
With the intoxication of love, we moved in together. In the early seventies, living together was still not quite socially acceptable, so we got married to stay together. I was in heaven. A beautiful wife and the excitement of living in London gave me the freedom to explore who I was in relation to the world.
Four years later, I returned to my flat after work, and she was gone. I don’t remember a note. When I phoned her mum, I learned she had left and gone back to live in Italy. There was no forwarding address. A year later, she filed for divorce through a solicitor. I’ve had no contact since the day before she disappeared, leaving nothing but her annoying cat, which I soon gave away.
Imagine the confusion.
Both of us had reasonable office jobs. No arguments, no raised voices, no money problems — just two people who had once been madly in love but now found very little to talk about.
I remember one complaint:
“You love your piano more than you love me.”
The role-play had opened a portal back to those zombified days. I didn’t know what I had done wrong and had no idea what I could have done to make things right. I sleepwalked for months, going through the motions of my job while trying to become a working musician.
My understanding of people has deepened with time, shaped by years of experience, introspection, and growth. The uncertainties of my younger self, once overwhelming, have transformed into quiet confidence, allowing me to hold space for others as they navigate their own struggles.
While the piano no longer supports me financially, it remains a vital part of my life — a source of joy and creative expression. The contrast between who I was then and who I am now is striking: once there was confusion, now there is clarity; where once I felt lost, now I feel grounded.
Awakening
Then, I sat at my computer desk involved in a video interactive training course, and all the feelings came flooding back and caught me completely unawares: the sadness, the feeling of complete helplessness, and the disorientation, taking me over like the ghost of my younger self coming back to haunt me.
For so many years, those feelings have been buried. Exiled to a part of me that rarely awakens.
In the role-play, I saw myself standing in the suit that I wore to my office job. It is ill-fitting, and my posture reminds me of my 5-year-old grandson when he knows he is not going to get his way. Shoulders slumped, arms hanging loosely, sad eyes. I was looking around for clues as to how I could escape this torture.
All I was hearing was that I was not doing it right. I should be doing more, I had abandoned my responsibilities. I had a moment before crashing back into the main room when I realised:
“This is not me! Not as I am now, something has been triggered.”
This realisation is absolutely what I have been training for. If a client triggers something in me, I need to be aware of it immediately, give it a nod of recognition, label it and pop it on my internal shelf of insights.
This 15-minute exercise prompted me to go straight to my therapist and dig deeper, leading to some major breakthroughs.
The Personal Therapy Session:
For the first time in my life, I was able to talk in-depth about my first marriage. I realised that for weeks previously, in our sessions, I had been working extensively on the feelings and challenges of my 20-year-old self, but not once had I mentioned my wife.
We had done deep work on me, searching for my identity and yearning for connection with others, but my wife was missing from the tableau. Now I could draw her back in, and the whole picture came back to life.
I realised that from the age of 10 until my late twenties, I had been trying to work out what role I should be playing. My authentic self had withdrawn from view so I could present something that I thought was more presentable. In the role play, I felt I was dissociating. Had I spent a whole chunk of my young life dissociating in order to survive?
Moving Forward
I now understand that at 23, my brain simply wasn’t equipped to handle the stress of a divorce. I was still growing, still learning how to manage emotions and make sense of complicated situations. No wonder I felt so lost. My brain was doing its best, but it just wasn’t ready to process the intensity of what was happening.
These insights have not only shaped my understanding of the past but have also brought me a new sense of freedom in my personal life. I realize now that the confusion I felt back then doesn’t need to define me or my relationships today. I’ve let go of the old narrative that something was fundamentally wrong with me or the way I handled things.
In my current relationship, I can recognize and communicate my needs without fear. I’ve become more patient, not just with others but with myself. I understand that it’s okay to be vulnerable and not always have the answers. My life now is not a role-play. There is no part I need to perform, no script to follow.
As a counsellor, this memory will stay with me, especially when working with young couples. It reminds me that their confusion or frustration isn’t a lack of effort or commitment — it’s often just a reflection of where they are in their lives and development.
I don’t have all the answers for them, just as I didn’t have them for myself back then. But what I can offer is space to explore, to help them see that confusion is part of the process, not a sign that something is wrong. In guiding others through that uncertainty, I’ve found a way to make peace with my own past.
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