Page 8 of Sorry, Not Sorry
Delilah stood outside Polly’s office, willing herself to knock on the door.
‘Calm down! There’s nothing to panic about,’ she muttered aloud, as if hearing the words would remove the sick feeling that had lodged itself in the pit of her stomach since opening Polly’s email.
Polly usually asked for a catchup by sticking her head around the door of Delilah’s office, so the formally worded email requesting a meeting at ten that morning had read like the business equivalent of ‘we need to talk’.
Delilah cleared her throat and inhaled deeply to steady her racing pulse.
When that didn’t work, she shuffled her feet on the carpet and wiped her suddenly damp palms down the side of the smart grey skirt she kept for work.
Come on, Del. Get a grip! Things were finally settling down and there had been no dramas with her clients for over two weeks – if she didn’t count the incident of the dog whose preference for sleeping in his ‘mummy’s’ bed had led his owners to seek counselling.
As the couple were leaving at the end of a heated session, the much-loved pooch had broken free of his leash and scampered around the building for twenty minutes before being recaptured.
But there was no way Polly could hold Delilah responsible for her clients’ dog’s behaviour, so why this meeting?
For crying out loud, knock on the bloody door, Delilah!
She squared her shoulders and raised her hand – just as the door opened.
‘I thought I heard a noise out here,’ Polly said, puzzled. ‘Why on earth didn’t you knock?’ Without waiting for a reply, she stood back and ushered Delilah inside.
Delilah had always loved Polly’s office, a light and airy corner room with huge windows on two walls and a bright rainbow rug in the centre of the parquet flooring.
Half the room was dominated by a huge bookcase stacked with books, with the rest of the space taken up by a squashy grey sofa with soft pastel throw cushions and three armchairs.
Polly’s desk, small and unobtrusive, was tucked into a small alcove next to a tall potted palm.
The office’s charm was the last thing on Delilah’s mind as she made an anxious beeline for the sofa, sitting up with her hands resting on her knees. Polly took a seat at the other end and shifted round to face her.
‘I’m sorry for the short notice but I’m glad you were able to make the time.’ Polly paused for a moment. ‘How are things going, Delilah?’
‘Absolutely fine,’ Delilah replied with a confident smile totally at odds with her upright posture and the nervous fluttering in her belly.
Polly gazed at her thoughtfully until Delilah, unnerved by the silence, dropped her calm facade and blurted out, ‘What’s this all about? Is there something wrong?’
She could hear the tremor in her voice, and Polly must have heard it too because her expression softened.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, Del, but I do want us to talk about your progress and see how best I can help you through your training. I know how much this job means to you, but it wouldn’t be fair of me to pretend that things are going swimmingly when we both know that’s not the case.’
Delilah squashed the instinctive impulse to leap to her own defence, and let Polly continue.
‘I’ve been reviewing your notes from your client sessions, and I have some concerns about the way you’re facilitating your couples’ conversations.’
‘Like what?’ Delilah demanded, her voice rising defensively.
Polly raised an eyebrow, and Delilah bit her lip and said quietly, ‘Sorry. I meant to ask, what kind of concerns?’
Reaching behind her, Polly picked up a manila folder from the side table and opened it, flipping through a sheaf of papers as she spoke.
‘I’ve printed off some of your notes which I thought we could discuss.
Let’s start with the session you had a couple of weeks ago with Sammie Wilson and her fiancé, Ross Diamond. ’
Delilah relaxed slightly; she had bent over backwards to support that couple.
‘The session went fine,’ she said firmly.
‘We talked through their communication feedback reports and how to use their learning from the love languages exercise. Sammie has been working hard to get Ross to improve his communication style, although between you and me, I don’t see Ross as someone who’s committed to doing the work.
He seems keen on her, though, and at least he’s turned up to the sessions. ’
Polly slipped on her glasses and scanned a page.
‘Reading through your notes, you seem to put more focus on Ross’s behaviour than on Sammie’s.
Keep in mind they’re seeking our help as a couple, and if our clients think we’re being partial or judgemental, they can feel under attack and shut down, which makes us ineffective.
I’m curious about why you’re not challenging Sammie’s perspective more? ’
Delilah shifted uneasily on the sofa and stared at the rainbow rug, trying to marshal a defence. Other than remembering she had been exhausted and suffering from a pounding headache that day, her recollections from the session were hazy.
‘It says on Ross’s feedback form that you referenced a past relationship of yours during the session?’ Polly continued.
Delilah’s head jerked upright. ‘ What? No, I didn’t!’
‘So you didn’t say something along the lines of…’ Polly flipped over a sheet and read out loud, ‘“I went out with someone emotionally closed off, but I would do things like hold his hand and stroke his arm and hug him, and it made a big difference”?’
Mortified, Delilah remained silent.
‘Delilah, surely I don’t have to remind you that we don’t bring our personal stories into counselling. At the very least, you risk hijacking the session and making it about you, never mind keeping clear boundaries and the ethics of the situation.’
Moving on before Delilah could speak, Polly plucked a sheet from the file and waved it. ‘I went through your report on the session with Rob and Malcolm Turner-Jones. You’re helping them work through their relationship after Malcolm’s affair, right?’
Delilah nodded, keeping tight-lipped until she knew where Polly was going with this.
‘Obviously I wasn’t in the room during the session, but your notes focus a lot on Rob’s feelings and I’m not seeing much here regarding Malcolm and what drove him into the affair. Is this an area you’re helping him explore?’
‘Of course I am, Polly,’ Delilah said with a resigned sigh, wondering if her supervisor planned to pick holes in every one of her client interactions.
‘Malcolm is very sorry about what he did and he’s desperate for Rob to forgive him.
We’ve done some exercises to help Malcolm reflect on what he thought was missing in the relationship, but he’s keen for us to support Rob through his feelings of rejection and that’s why we focused on Rob in that session. ’
‘But has Malcolm been able to articulate why he felt the need to look elsewhere?’ Polly probed gently. ‘If he’s not clear on his motivation, how will he recognise when he might be in danger of it happening again?’
Delilah groaned silently, feeling distinctly under attack, but Polly didn’t appear to have finished.
‘Okay, so let’s talk about that session you had earlier this week with the Hendersons.
Now, I’m going to be candid, after what happened in your previous session, I had thought about reassigning them to another counsellor, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to reset your relationship with them.
I appreciate they aren’t the easiest of couples, but I’m still concerned about how you are facilitating their sessions and maintaining boundaries. ’
Delilah’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The easiest of couples? Come on, Polly – Brian is a nightmare, and Janine has been a saint to put up with his rules and regulations all these years. If I lived with him, he would have driven me completely up the wall by now!’
Polly’s voice switched from gentle to crisp as peanut brittle. ‘That’s the point, Delilah. Deciding who is right or wrong is not a useful approach to helping a couple. Their relationship isn’t about you, which you should know by now.’
‘I’m not saying it is! I just want Janine to feel confident about setting boundaries for herself. She obviously feels suffocated by Brian and he didn’t want to acknowledge that in the session, so?—’
‘—so you thought you’d do it for him?’
Hearing the incredulity in Polly’s voice, Delilah hesitated. ‘Not – not exactly. Anyway, it’s not just Brian – Janine can be a bit all over the place with her words at times, so occasionally I try to summarise her thoughts?—’
‘—which you should have let her do herself. You can’t do Janine’s work for her; yours is to give them the space and support to work through their situation without judgement.’
Polly referred back to Delilah’s notes. ‘Looking at your notes from this and earlier sessions, you’ve made several references to the husband’s insistence on his wife making him dinner.
Have you explored whether acts of service might be his primary love language and if his wife could be encouraged to see it that way or perhaps find a way they might align – or were you just focused on judging him? ’
‘Polly, you weren’t there! Despite everything the woman says, it’s so obvious she’s compromising her truth. She’s not getting through to him and all I did was try and help her articulate what Brian didn’t seem to be hearing.’
Polly’s face turned a deep pink, and she sucked in her cheeks and took a breath, looking as close to furious as Delilah could remember. After an anxious few moments, Polly relaxed her face and faced Delilah squarely.