Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,53
to tolerate discomfort, because some discomfort is unavoidable for the process to be effective.
Or as Maxine said one Friday afternoon: “I don’t do ‘you go, girl’ therapy.”
It may seem counterintuitive, but therapy works best when people start getting better—when they feel less depressed or anxious, or the crisis has passed. Now they’re less reactive, more present, more able to engage in the work. Unfortunately, sometimes people leave just as their symptoms lift, not realizing (or perhaps knowing all too well) that the work is just beginning and that staying will require them to work even harder.
Once, at the end of a session with Wendell, I told him that sometimes, on days when I left more upset than when I came in—tossed out into the world, having so much more to say, holding so many painful feelings—I hated therapy.
“Most things worth doing are difficult,” he replied. He said this not in a glib way but in a tone and with an expression that made me think he spoke from personal experience. He added that while everyone wants to leave each session feeling better, I, of all people, should know that that’s not always how therapy works. If I wanted to feel good in the short term, he said, I could eat a piece of cake or have an orgasm. But he wasn’t in the short-term-gratification business.
And neither, he added, was I.
Except that I was—as a patient, that is. What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in ways they normally choose not to. A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it’s up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, “Oh, isn’t that interesting! Now what?” instead of turning away.
I decide to take my consultation group’s advice and end my sessions with Becca. Afterwards, I feel both disappointed and liberated. When I tell Wendell about it at my next session, he says he knows exactly how it felt to be with her.
“You have patients like her?” I ask.
“I do,” he says, and he smiles broadly, holding my gaze.
It takes a minute, but then I get it: He means me. Yikes! Does he do jumping jacks or down caffeine before our sessions too? Many patients wonder if they bore us with what feels to them like their unremarkable lives, but they’re not boring at all. The patients who are boring are the ones who won’t share their lives, who smile through their sessions or launch into seemingly pointless and repetitive stories every time, leaving us scratching our heads: Why are they telling me this? What significance does this have for them? People who are aggressively boring want to keep you at bay.
It’s what I’ve done with Wendell when talking incessantly about Boyfriend; he can’t quite reach me because I’m not allowing him to. And now he’s laying it out there: I’m doing with him what Boyfriend and I did with each other—and I’m not so different from Becca after all.
“I’m telling you this by way of invitation,” Wendell says, and I think about how many invitations of mine Becca had rebuffed. I don’t want to do that with Wendell.
If I wasn’t able to help Becca, maybe she’ll be able to help me.
19
What We Dream Of
One day, a twenty-four-year-old woman I’d been seeing for a few months came in and told me about the previous night’s dream.
“I’m at the mall,” Holly began, “and I run into this girl, Liza, who was horrible to me in high school. She didn’t tease me to my face, like some other girls did. She just completely ignored me! Which would have been okay, except that if I ran into her outside of school, she’d pretend she had no idea who I was. Which was crazy, because we’d been at the same school for three years, and we had several classes together.
“Anyway, she lived a block away, so I’d run into her a lot—you know, around the neighborhood—and I’d have to pretend I didn’t see her, because if I said hi or waved or acknowledged her in any way, she’d scrunch up her forehead and give me this look like she was trying to place me but couldn’t. And then she’d say, in this fake-sweet voice, ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’ or ‘Have we met before?’ or, if I was lucky, ‘This is so embarrassing, but what’s your name again?’”