Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,153

will be useful to you?” he asks.

I think about this. He can’t answer my question about whether Margo has the appointment before mine or even say if he’s aware that we’re talking about Margo. He can’t tell me if the fact that I see his patient’s husband is new information or if he’s known all along. He can’t tell me what Margo may or may not have said about me. And I know if I were ever to say anything about John, Wendell would handle it professionally and we’d talk about it in the moment. Maybe I want his advice on whether I did the right thing by telling him about the situation.

“Do you ever wonder if I’m a good therapist?” I ask instead. “I mean, given all you’ve seen in here?” I remember my earlier “Do you like me?,” but this time I’m asking something different. Then I was saying, Do you love me as a child, love my neshama? Now I’m saying, Can you picture me as an adult, as a competent grownup? Of course, Wendell has never seen me do therapy, has never supervised my work. How can he have any opinion at all on the matter? I start to say this but Wendell stops me.

“I know you are,” he says.

At first I don’t understand. He knows I’m a good therapist? Based on wha—oh! So Margo thinks things are getting better with John.

Wendell smiles. I smile. We both know what he can’t tell me.

“I have one more question,” I say. “Given the situation, how do we lessen the awkwardness?”

“Maybe you just did,” he says.

And he’s right. In couples therapy, therapists talk about the difference between privacy (spaces in people’s psyches that everyone needs in healthy relationships) and secrecy (which stems from shame and tends to be corrosive). Carl Jung called secrets “psychic poison,” and after all of the secrets I’ve kept from Wendell, it feels good to have this final secret out in the open.

I don’t ask for counseling again because the truth is that Wendell has been counseling me from day one, in the sense that therapy is a profession you learn by doing—not just the work of being a therapist, but also the work of being a patient. It’s a dual apprenticeship, which is why there’s a saying that therapists can take their patients only as far as they’ve gone in their own inner lives. (There’s much debate about this idea—like my colleagues, I’ve seen patients reach heights I can only aspire to. But still, it’s no surprise that as I heal inside, I’m also becoming more adept at healing others.)

On a practical level, too, I’ve taken Wendell’s lessons straight to my office.

“I’m reminded of a cartoon of a prisoner, shaking the bars . . .” I said to John early on, in a Hail Mary attempt to help him see that the “idiot” he was talking about that day wasn’t his jailer after all.

When I got to the punch line—the bars are open on each side—John smiled for a second in what seemed like recognition but then batted it back at me. “Oh, give me a break,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Do other patients actually fall for this?” But he was the outlier. The intervention has worked beautifully with everyone else.

Still, the most important skill I’ve learned from Wendell is how to remain strategic while also bringing my personality into the room. Would I kick a patient to make a point? Probably not. Would I sing? I’m not sure. But I might not have yelled “Fuck!” with Julie had I not seen Wendell be so utterly himself with me. In internships, therapists learn how to do therapy by the book, mastering the fundamentals the way you have to master scales when learning to play piano. For both, once you know the basics, you can skillfully improvise. Wendell’s rule isn’t as simple as “There are no rules.” There are rules, and we’re trained to adhere to them for a reason. But he has shown me that when rules are bent with thoughtful intention, it broadens the definition of what effective treatment can be.

Wendell and I don’t talk about John or Margo again, but a few weeks later, as I settle into my chair in the waiting room, Wendell’s door opens and I hear a male voice. “So this time next Wednesday?”

“Yes, see you then,” replies Wendell, then his door clicks shut.

Past the screen, a guy in a suit slips out the door to the