Unexpected Fear

 “I’m so terribly nervous I can’t stand myself,” Kaleigh begins wringing her hands, jiggling her right foot. “I thought I was going to be so excited about going back to Chicago after my first semester at school. But I’m not! I’m suddenly terrified of flying. I was never afraid of flying before. Maybe it’s because of the Israeli-Palestinian war and I’m afraid of terrorism, like of my plane being shot down. I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid of your plane being shot down?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It sounds ridiculous. But there was 9/11. Of course I wasn’t even born then, but still… It feels like anything can happen.”

“Anything can happen, but it is interesting to wonder why you suddenly developed a fear you never had before. Do you feel especially frightened because you’re Jewish?”

“I asked myself that. I guess someone could bomb the plane because they thought there’d be lots of Jews on it, but it’s not like I think someone’s specifically coming to get me because I’m Jewish.”

“Any other thoughts come to mind?”

“I just had a flash of my older sister. She’s not supposed to be there this holiday… But what if she is? That would be pretty scary.” Pause. “Oh God! It would be so terrible if she’s there. She ruins everything. She ruined my whole childhood! She ruined my family,” Kaleigh says crying. Pause. “I’m pretty sure my father told her not to come. But that doesn’t mean she won’t. And then everything would be ruined! All there would be is screaming and more screaming and tantrums and threats!! I can’t stand it.” Pause. “Do you think that’s why I developed a fear of flying? Like maybe I really don’t want to go home. Like maybe I’m afraid of what’s waiting for me.”

“Have you asked your parents if she’ll be there.”

“No, I haven’t. I feel scared about that too. Scared there will be this big scene about my even asking.”

“Why?”

“My mother will immediately get mad at me for being so afraid of my sister. And she’ll be mad that I might bring up the abuse again. She’s never believed me about the sexual abuse. She knows my sister used to beat the shit out of me, but she always dismissed the sexual abuse as two kids just playing around,” Kaleigh says crying. “I don’t know what’s more painful, the abuse or my mother just dismissing it. No, that’s not true. The sexual abuse was way more painful. I haven’t even told you all of it.” 

“Maybe it would be helpful if you did,” I say gently.

“She used to take things, mostly sticks, sometimes a vase or whatever else she found around and put it inside me. A few times she even threatened to use a knife, but she never did.” Pause. “Usually she put it in… in my vagina, but sometimes she’d put it in the other place. That really hurt,” she says crying.

“That’s so awful Kaleigh. I’m so sorry you had to endure that, it sounds like torture. No wonder you’re scared to go home. And I’m so sorry your mother doesn’t believe you. What your sister did is certainly not just ‘playing doctor.’ What about your Dad?”

“I’m so glad you believe me! I was afraid you wouldn’t. Afraid you’d think I was just making it up.”

“Of course I believe you Kaleigh. I can’t imagine why you’d want to make up something like that.”

“I’m so ashamed of it. I even lied to my boyfriend and said I’d had sex with one guy before him. It was better than telling him about what my sister did to me!”

“Shame is a very common in sexual abuse victims, but that doesn’t mean you have anything to be ashamed of. You were the victim. She was bigger and stronger and abused you.”

“I know. But that’s not how I feel.”

“I understand. And we’ll have lots of time to deal with those feelings. I notice you didn’t say anything about your Dad.”

“I’m pretty sure he believes me, but he’s not about to argue with my mother. It was hard enough for him to tell my sister that she wasn’t welcome in their house anymore after she hit him and trashed the entire living room.”

“I am so sorry, Kaleigh. Are you sure you do want to go home? Or maybe there’s someplace you can go where you can feel safe if your sister is there?”

“I can’t imagine announcing that I’m leaving to stay with Brad or even with one of my girlfriends. That would create an uproar in itself.”

“I know we don’t have time to discuss this further today, but we do need to work on you’re not being so afraid of your fear that you’re willing to sacrifice yourself. Obviously you have good reason to be afraid, but you do need to first and foremost take care of yourself.”

Fearing the Past

Katie barely smiles as I greet her in the waiting room. She walks slowly to my office and gingerly lowers herself into the chair. Oh no, I think to myself, did something happen with her pregnancy?  Just last week she was radiant, bubbling with joy, thrilled that she’d be giving birth to a little girl.

“What’s wrong, Katie?” I ask.

Silent tears stream down her face.

“Did something happen to the baby?”

She shakes her head, cradling her stomach. “On Monday,” she says hesitantly, “Patrick woke up and right away he seemed different. He didn’t kiss my stomach and listen for the baby as he usually does. He just got up and started getting ready for work. I asked what was wrong, but he said he was just tired. I tried to connect with him, but he just ate breakfast and left. He texted me a couple of times during the day so I thought maybe everything was fine. But when he came home he was still distant, preoccupied. I told him he had to talk to me, that we weren’t having dinner until I knew what was bothering him.

“And then he asked me, he asked me if I was ever afraid I’d hurt our baby. I couldn’t believe it. I felt as though he’d slapped me. I started crying. He said he’d had a dream that I was shaking our baby and screaming at her. He said I must have thought about it, that I couldn’t have not thought about it given my history. I couldn’t stop crying. I just couldn’t stop. Like I can’t stop now.”

“I understand you’re in a tremendous amount of pain,” I say softly, “And this might seem like a ridiculous question, but can you say what you are crying about? Is seems like there’s many things you could be crying about right now and maybe it would be helpful if we tried to understand them.”

“I’m crying about Patrick even questioning that I could possibly, possibly ever hurt our child.” 

“I understand that Katie. But you’ve questioned yourself too. We spent many sessions talking about your fears about your past, about whether you’d repeat your history.”

“And you told me not everyone who’s abused becomes an abuser!” Katie says, practically yelling at me.

“That’s absolutely true.”

“So?”

“And did my saying that take away all your fears?”

Katie covers her face with her hands, sobbing and shaking her head. “Why couldn’t he have faith in me? Why does he have to doubt me?”

“So you feel abandoned by Patrick.”

“Yes, yes!! He’s always been my biggest champion. He was always the one who said I could overcome anything, do anything.” Pause. “I would never, ever have agreed to have a child if I thought he didn’t believe in me!”

“I wonder if you’re saying that if Patrick doesn’t believe in you, you can’t believe in you either.”

Katie stops crying and looks at me. “That’s right. That’s absolutely right! That’s why Patrick’s question devastated me. I can’t lose my biggest champion just as I’m about to undertake the scariest step of my life.”

“So you do know it’s scary, scary for you and scary for Patrick. It’s sound like it would help if both of you talked about your fears, not to make accusations, but to provide each other with support and understanding.”

Silence.

“Where did you go, Katie?”

“Ever since Monday I’ve been re-living the horrible things my mother did to me, how she’d slap me around, take a belt to me, drag me around the floor by my hair, make me eat dog food, spit at me. She hated me. I know she wanted me dead.” Katie’s voice gets flatter and flatter as she recounts the abuse.

“Katie, you can feel about all these horrible things your mother did to you. You don’t have to shut down. You can hate her back.”

“I don’t want to hate her back. I just don’t want her to affect my life in any way.”

“It would be good to be indifferent to your mother, but it’s impossible that she not affect your life. She’s your mother. And she was your mother when you were a helpless, vulnerable, dependent child. But your life doesn’t have to be determined by her.”

“So you don’t think I’ll abuse my child?”

“No, I don’t think you’ll abuse your child. You’re a great aunt to your brother’s kids. You love your animals.”

“My brother’s kids are boys. Will that make a difference?”

“It sounds like that’s something you’re concerned about.”

Katie nods. “It crossed my mind when I knew I’d be having a girl. But I also thought, good, I get to do a do-over with my little girl. I just know it will be different.”

“You mean you and Patrick will make it different.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. And Patrick and I are going to be doing some heavy talking. Thank you so much. Helpful, as always.”

“My pleasure,” I say smiling.

Compassion

“You don’t understand!” Morgan screams at me through clenched teeth, hitting the sides of her head with her fists. “I hate myself! I hate myself! I’m stupid and ugly and awful. Bad! Bad! Bad!”

“Stop it, Morgan,” I say raising my voice. “You know you’re not allowed to hurt yourself in my office. Stop and try to calm down.”

Morgan brings her fists in front of her eyes and bursts into tears. I silently breathe a sigh of relief. She continues to sob.

“I’m here, Morgan,” I say gently.

She nods, still crying. 

“She’s such a bitch,” Morgan manages to say through her tears. “But why am I such a mess? I should know it by now. She’s the golden child. Everything good comes to her. And me? I’m just bad and deserve everything I get.”

“Morgan, is there even a little part of you that knows that’s not true, that knows you were a small, helpless child who deserved to be cherished, not beaten?”

“Nope! You just said it. I was small and helpless, by definition that made me bad.”

“But all children are small and helpless, Morgan.”

“But not all children are illegitimate.”

“That was hardly your doing.”

“Tell that to my mother. I was born, ergo it’s my fault. And then Prince Charming comes into the picture and the golden child is born and I’m even more worthless than before. And now not only does Mom get to beat up on me, but my sister does too. You should have heard her gloating. Gloating! I mean I get it. She’s happy she’s pregnant. I should be happy for her. But gloating. Like it was a contest. I can’t even get a relationship and she and Rob are going to be the ‘happiest people in the world. You’ll know what I mean when it happens to you.’ Gag! I thought I’d throw up. But that’s because I’m bad. Because I can’t love my sister, because I can’t be happy for her.”

“It’s very hard to be happy for someone who smiled sweetly after she got you in trouble and watched you be beaten.”

“But I deserved it! I did pull her hair, or steal her doll, or punch her. I hated her! I still do. And that makes me really, really bad.”

“Does it?”

“Doesn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to love your sister? Aren’t you supposed to turn the other cheek?”

“Your rage at your mother had to go somewhere.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean. I was a rageful brat. And if I couldn’t rage at my mother, I turned it on my sister. Charming!” 

I sigh. “I always feel as though I’m arguing with you, Morgan, always trying to convince you that you need to have compassion for yourself…”

Morgan interrupts me, snorting her disdain. I continue talking.

“…that you need to have compassion for yourself as the scared, helpless child you were and understanding for yourself as the angry adult who keeps turning that anger on yourself.”

“Compassion doesn’t exist is my vocabulary, let alone in my experience.”

“If you read about a child who was beaten with a belt, who was locked in a closet, who was repeatedly sent to bed without food, wouldn’t you feel compassion for that child?”

“Maybe. But for me, for me I feel only hatred. I was bad. My mother was trying to beat the badness out of me. If my mother was bad she would have beaten my sister too. But it was only me, only me who needed to be beaten.”

“I do understand, Morgan, that you have to hold on to the belief that you were the bad one because as long as you’re the bad one you still have hope you can be different and win your mother’s love. But if she can never love you – perhaps because of the circumstances of your birth, perhaps because you reminded her too much of her – then the hope of her loving you is gone and you’re left in mourning, without the only mother you ever had. And that’s sad, Morgan. Very sad. And you need to find compassion for yourself.”

“There’s that word again. You don’t get it. There’s no word like that for me. It’s as though you were speaking Chinese.”

“I do understand that compassion feels entirely foreign to you. But you need to find your compassion for yourself, perhaps by first taking in my compassion for you. Your life has been terribly painful and unfair and you need to be able to feel sad for you.”

Failure to Thrive

“I’ve decided to write a book,” Karen announces at the beginning of her of session. Dressed in casual jeans, no make-up with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, Karen looks younger than her 48 years.

Although her declaration leads me to think, ‘Oh no, not another idea that goes nowhere,’ I take a more supportive approach. “In art history?” I ask, Karen’s area of specialty.

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. I have to do something. I can’t go on just being Dr. Thomas Hartfield’s wife. It’s too boring. I don’t want to have to get all dressed up and hang out at the club playing bridge, gossiping with the women.”

“Weren’t you recently talking about wanting to open an art gallery?”

“Yes. I still think that’s a good idea, but I don’t know, there’d have to be so many people involved, people I’d have to manage. It seems overwhelming. Writing is something I can do on my own, at my own time, in my own space.

“Of course, I haven’t written anything since I was in college. I was pretty good back then. I think I considered majoring in English. But then again I thought about majoring in lots of things. I’m not even sure how I ended up with a major in art history. I guess because I hung around college for so long and had so many credits, they told me it was time for me to graduate and art history was it.”

“So it seems, Karen, we’re back to talking about how difficult it is for you to make a decision and to carry a plan through to fruition.”

She sighs. “You don’t think I’d write that book do you?”

“Well, I don’t have a crystal ball, but when you say that you don’t  know what you want to write about, it seems you could get stuck right there. I’d be concerned you could think endlessly about what you did or didn’t want to write and never be able to move beyond that point.”

“How did you know what you wanted to write?” Karen asks me.

I don’t introduce my book into my therapy sessions, but many patients Google me and find it online. Now I wonder if there’s some relationship between my book and Karen’s sudden interest in writing. “Before I answer that question, Karen, can I ask you how you feel about my having written a book?”

“Envious. You were able to follow through and do it. But maybe also inspired, like if you can write a book maybe I can too.” She hesitates.

“What just happened there?”

“Nothing. I guess I got anxious. There are so many choices. I don’t know how anyone ever decides on one path over another. I don’t know how you pick. I don’t know how you pick one and give up the others. So how did you decide what to write about?”

I wonder about Karen’s anxiety. Does she worry I’d feel angry or vindictive if she wrote a book? Does making one choice over others bring up fear of loss? Keeping these questions in mind, I answer Karen. “I felt compelled to write about my relationship with my late husband. I think there’s often an emotional press in writing; you have something you have to say. It’s like being in therapy. It’s sharing a vital part of yourself that you want to be known.”    

“Do you think I don’t want to be known?”

“That’s a very interesting question. What do you think?”

“Well declaring myself, taking path A rather than path B would be a way of being more known.”

I’m silent, intrigued by Karen’s train of thought.

“But why wouldn’t I want to be known?”

“I was just asking myself the same thing.”

Silence.

“Weird. The words, ‘You’re a moving target’ just went through my head.” Pause. “Who did I think would shoot me?”

I wonder if it’s me, but I remain silent.

“My oldest sister for sure. She was horribly jealous of me. I was the pretty one, although I made myself as unattractive as possible until she left for college. She’d cut up my clothes, steal all my panties. One time she even cut off part of my hair in the middle of the night.”

“That’s called abuse, Karen,” I say, surprised by this revelation I had not previously heard.

“You think?”

“Definitely. What did your parents do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember telling them. Maybe I did. Maybe they said we had to work it out. That part of my childhood is a bit fuzzy.” Pause. “Do you think this is relevant?”

“I definitely think this is relevant, Karen. We have to stop now, but we definitely need to spend more time understanding how your sister affected your life.”

When Silence Speaks

Emma settles into the chair across from me, takes a deep breath and speaks quietly, slowly, deliberately. She’s telling me about her week. Her son is excited about his softball team, her daughter is anxious about her upcoming school play, her husband is away on a business trip. “That makes it easier,” she says.

“It makes what easier?” I ask.

“His being gone. I know it’s terrible to feel like that and I know it’s not his fault, but it’s easier.”

“But what’s the ‘it’ that’s easier?”

There is a long, profound silence. Emma sits motionless. Although I’ve only seen Emma for a couple of months, I’ve become familiar with her stillness.  

“I’m trying to decide whether I should take the children out to dinner tonight,” she finally says. 

I’ve also become familiar with Emma’s tendency to avoid answering questions and to switch topics, often to something banal, almost as though there was nothing we had been discussing. 

“What just happened now, Emma?” I ask. “How did you get from it being easier when your husband’s gone to taking the kids out to dinner?”

“If I’m going to take the kids out to dinner, tonight would be a good night. Before he gets home.”

Yes, I think, but she still hasn’t addressed what makes it easier when he’s gone. I consider pushing, but find myself reluctant to do so.  

Another profound silence ensues. 

“Do you ever take vacations?” she asks suddenly.

“Yes, I do. Why do you ask? Do you feel anxious about my being gone?”

Another long silence. “No,” she says with a nervous laugh. “It would be easier. I wouldn’t have to think of what to say.”

“So it’s easier when your husband is gone and it would be easier when I’m gone.”

Silence.

“Speaking is obviously very difficult for you, Emma. What happens when you sit in your silence? What are you thinking? What do you feel?” 

Silence.

Emma’s silence, her non-responsiveness, her tendency to talk about apparently inane topics. None of it makes me angry. Sometimes bored, sometimes frustrated, but generally I hold myself still along with her. It’s like feeling frozen. Emma has told me a little about her background. She was the only child of a religious family who lived in the rural Midwest. Her father was extremely depressed, often unable to get himself to work for weeks at a time. Her mother was an angry, embittered woman who reached for the belt for any minor infraction.

“Emma, what about as a child? Was it difficult for you to speak then too?”

Another nervous laugh. And silence.

After a while I ask, “Can you say what you’ve been thinking during the last couple of minutes that you’ve been silent?”

After a while she responds, “They’re images.”

“Can you tell me what some of the images are?” I say gently.

“Cornfields. Sunflowers. My mother. It’s cold.”

I flash on a patient I saw years ago who, as a child, was punished by being left naked in the storm cellar. I wonder if Emma was similarly abused.

“Can you tell me about your mother, Emma?”

“She was mean. She hated me. She said I was the devil’s child, that she needed to beat the devil out of me.”

“What kinds of things did she beat you for?”

“Everything. Not getting up at exactly 6AM. Tracking mud in the house. Talking when she had one of her headaches. She always said her headaches were my fault. She never had headaches before I was born. That’s what she said.”

“You were terrified of her.”

She nods. 

“Did you ever feel angry with her?”

Silence.

“You can feel angry with someone even if you don’t express it,” I say.

“She gets bigger.”

“I’m sorry?” I say, confused.

“The image. It gets bigger.”

“You’re saying that if you feel angry at your mother you see her image getting bigger?”

She nods.

“And you feel more frightened.”

She nods again.

“Is that what happens when you talk to me, Emma? Does the image of your mother get bigger, like you’re not supposed to be telling me things?”

Silence.

“You know, Emma, you can always tell me to stop, that you’ve had enough. I’ll always respect your wishes. The last thing I want to do is be another abuser.”  

Silence. Then she says, “Maybe if it would be better if we didn’t go out to eat. It’s a school night. The children need to do homework.”

Although she can’t say it directly, Emma has clearly told me she’s had enough.

Secrets

Tall, thin, with neatly coifed grey hair, Estelle Harrison, fidgets in the chair, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “I’ve never done this before. I’m almost 80 years old. I can’t believe I’m coming to a psychologist. But I have to talk to someone. My husband has lung cancer and he won’t let me tell anyone. Another secret. I’ve been the keeper of secrets my entire life.”

“Why is your husband’s cancer a secret?” I ask, thinking how unimaginable it would have been for me to keep my late husband’s cancer secret, how more impossible it all would have been without the support of friends and family. 

“He feels ashamed of being sick, like it’s a weakness.”

“So you’ve told no one?”

“Our daughters know. They call. But they have their own lives. And truthfully,” she says sighing, “I’m not sure how much they’d care anyway. Dave wasn’t a very good father. In fact, he was a terrible father. He used to beat them. That was another secret I kept. He’d take down their pants and beat them with a belt.”

For a reason I cannot completely explain, I think, “Did he get off on it?” What I ask is, “How old were they?”

“I can’t remember how old they were when he started. Young. Too young.”

“Until …?” I ask.

“They both left the house pretty early, so I’d say until they were seventeen. Actually after Maureen left – she’s the oldest – Liz got it worse.”   

Finding this difficult to listen to, I say nothing. My mother didn’t protect me from my father’s rages, but he wasn’t beating me and his rage wasn’t fueled by a perverse sexual desire as seems to be true for Dave Harrison.  

As if reading my thoughts, Mrs. Harrison says, “You think I’m terrible don’t you?”

“I don’t think you’re terrible, but I’m not sure why you didn’t try to intervene, to protect your daughters.”

“I was afraid he’d get physical with me too.”

“And did he?”

“He slapped me across the face a couple of time.”

I am again silent.

“You younger generation, you all think I should have left him. But it wasn’t so easy back then. I was a housewife. I had no way to support myself. I wouldn’t have known what to do,” she says starting to cry.

Feeling more compassion, I say, “It sounds like your daughters are angry with you for staying, for not protecting them. That must make it harder for them to be available to you; that must make you feel all the more alone.”

She nods her head, still crying.

“This might seem like a foolish question, but why haven’t you told whomever you want about your husband’s illness, regardless of what he wants?”

She looks at me, startled. “I can’t do that. It’s his illness. If he doesn’t want me to tell, I just can’t.”

I feel myself getting angry at Mrs. Harrison’s passivity. Is that reasonable? Or is my anger at my mother seeping into this therapy session? Or, yet another possibility, am I feeling Mrs. Harrison’s own anger? 

“Are you angry with your husband, Mrs. Harrison?” I ask.

“I can’t be angry at him. He’s sick.”

“You can still feel angry with him. You can feel angry for his mistreating you and your daughters. You can be angry that he won’t allow you to speak, to tell people who could be supportive of you.” Suddenly I wonder, “Does your husband know you came here today?”

“Oh no, I could never tell him that. He’d be furious at me for telling our secrets.”

I again feel annoyed. Now I wonder if I am feeling angry like her husband, angry that she is so passive, angry that she presents as a martyr just waiting to be beaten. Does she carry within her both the beaten child and the angry parent, with the angry parent projected outward so she doesn’t have to feel the rage herself?  Way too complicated for a first session but I do ask, “What about your own childhood, Mrs. Harrison? Were you beaten?”

“Oh no. I was the good one. My brother and sister got my mother’s rage, but I always did what she wanted and I never talked about what went on at home.”

“Just as you did with your husband. But were you angry with your mother?”

“I couldn’t be. I was too afraid I’d give her some sassy answer one day and then I’d get it too.”

“Sounds like you might have lots of angry stored up inside.”

She shrugs. “I guess.”

Unsurprisingly, another passive response.” 

In Search of Contentious Relationships

“Big surprise,” Tricia says, sighing, “Billy broke up with me. I told you he would. I told you he was nothing but a big baby who needed more and more reassuring and couldn’t tolerate arguing or sticking up for himself. Same old story again and again. I don’t know, don’t they make any 35 to 45 year old men who are men anymore?”

I’ve been thinking about Tricia and my relationship. I’ve been thinking about how quickly I find myself sucked into what is indeed her argumentative style. I’ve been thinking about why she needs to make all her relationships so contentious. And I’ve been thinking about why I’m so easily engaged in her argumentative style, as opposed to staying in my role as the therapist who seeks to analyze and understand.

My mind runs quickly through the responses that first come to me: Say nothing, which she’d experience as withholding and therefore maddening; Say, “Why do you think you keep finding men who are so wishy-washy?” which she’d hear as attacking; Say, “Why do you think you need to make your relationships so contentious?” probably the most important question which she would immediately dispute. For the moment, I settle for the most innocuous response possible, a typical therapist question.

“How do you feel about his breaking up with you?”

“Boy, there’s a typical therapist question if I ever heard one!”

I should have known she’d get me on that one, I think to myself.

“I felt like, well, I knew it.”

“But what did you feel?” I persist.

She shrugs. “Not much.”

“Tricia, can I ask you what you feel about our relationship?”

“Wow! That’s a change of topic. Where did that come from?”

“Well, we’re talking about relationships and you and I certainly have a relationship. We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year now.”

“Yeah, and I’m no further along than I was to begin with”

I’m beginning to feel dismissed and demeaned. Although I certainly take responsibility for the lack of progress in any treatment, Tricia’s inability to look at herself and her role in thwarting her own growth is more than annoying. Are my feelings similar to the ones I had with my father who knew everything, argued about everything and called me stupid if I ever dared to disagree with him?     

I persevere. “Tricia, have you ever felt close to anyone, ever?”

“You’re all over the map today,” she snaps back.

“Can you tell that you’re trying to bait me into an argument? It’s like you’re sparring with me as opposed to experiencing us on the same side, as trying to help you to better understand yourself and get to the place where you say you want to be, in a relationship with a man.”

“Where I say I want to be? What do you mean by that? Don’t you believe me? How can we be on the same side if you don’t even believe me?”

“Tricia, this is impossible,” I say clearly angry. “It’s as though you listen to everything I say looking to pick out the one thing that you can argue with me about and zoom right in on it.”

“Ah ha,” she replies, with a slight smile and a sparkle in her eyes, “I got you pissed off.”

“And why does that feel good to you?” I ask. “Does it give you a feeling of control over me? Does it keep a distance between us that’s more comfortable?”

“It shows you’re strong enough for me. That you can fight with me. That you can take what I have to dish out.”

“Who did that to you, Tricia? Who wanted to make you tough enough to fight back?”

In an instant, Tricia’s face becomes expressionless, frozen, her eyes staring blankly ahead. I’ve seen that look many times before, the look of an abused child.

“Who did that to you, Tricia?” I ask again, much more gently.

Tricia blinks and focuses back in on me. “My mother. I’ve never told anyone. I hate being a victim. She used to beat the shit out of me. She’d beat me and beat me until I stopped crying, until I was no longer a baby, until I could take it. She thought she was helping me. I thought she hated me. Except I think I have love and hate all mixed up.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Tricia. You were a helpless child. A helpless child can’t be anything but a victim. There’s no shame in that, although I’m sure you do feel a lot of shame. And I’m sure you’re right, love and hate is all mixed up for you. We have lots to work on. But I’m really glad you told me Tricia. I know it wasn’t easy.”   

Imprisoned

Andrea again calls me from home.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice hardly above a whisper. “I know I said I’d try to come today but I can’t. I can hardly get myself out of bed. I can’t leave the house. I keep calling in sick to work. I hope I don’t get fired. I just can’t function. I’m so scared,” she adds crying. 

Those of you who follow my blog will have met Andrea a few weeks ago, the woman who had been sexually abused by her father and felt herself more endangered after the Boston Marathon bombings. And now there’s the case in Cleveland, the shocking imprisonment for over ten years of three young women who were finally able to escape. 

“It’s all right, Andrea,” I say gently. “I understand. You know I always say that you can only do what you can do. We’ll do whatever we need to do to help you through this.”

“I don’t think I will get through this. I’m back there. I’m back in that horrible house. I keep seeing those disgusting green walls. And the closet. I’m locked in that closet. I feel like huddling in a corner, folded over on  myself, just like I was as a child, hoping that he’d leave me alone, but not wanting to be left in that closet for hours or days at a time. So did I wish he’d come back? That’s disgusting. I’m disgusting.”

“I bet you don’t think those three women are disgusting, Andrea.”

“No, of course not, they’re heroes. I don’t know how they endured for all those years. And that child! That child has never seen the outside world. That seems impossible to take in!”

“Notice how caring and compassionate you are towards those women and the child,” I say. “I wish you were able to have even a tiny bit of that compassion for yourself.” 

“It’s not the same.”

“In what way isn’t it the same, Andrea?” 

“They were imprisoned. They had no choice. I could have told. Why didn’t I tell?’ she asks plaintively, crying. “Why didn’t I run away?”

Although Andrea and I have covered this ground many times, her self-loathing and need to blame herself remains very difficult to change. To emotionally accept that she was an abused, helpless, dependent child without any options, is to accept her total vulnerability. And as awful as the guilt and self-hatred is, it is preferable to feeling completely powerless.

“You were a child, Andrea. And he was your father. There was no place for you to go. These women are adults now and they all went back to the embrace of their families. I’m not minimizing the horror of their story in any way. But I don’t want you to minimize the horror of yours either. You were as helpless and powerless as they were.”

“But that doesn’t make me feel better!” Andrea wails. 

“I understand that Andrea. I understand that hating yourself, thinking you could have done something, anything, in many ways feels better than experiencing your total helpless. But, and this is an important but, you’re no longer that helpless child. You’re a competent, capable adult. It doesn’t mean bad things can’t happen, but today you have many more options than you had as a child.”

“But why didn’t I tell?”

“Because you were afraid, because you were ashamed, because you didn’t know what would happen if you told.” Suddenly I have a thought. “I wonder Andrea, if in addition to these women’s story making you more frightened, whether it also made you even madder at yourself for not figuring out a way to tell. Here you see how supportive and welcoming and thrilled complete strangers are of these women and I wonder if that made you almost envious, like you’re still in hiding and no one ever got to applaud you.”

Andrea mumbles something on the other end of the phone.

“I’m sorry, Andrea, I didn’t hear you.”

“I said you’re right. I found myself almost wishing I were those women. And then I got furious at myself for that thought. Disgusting! How could I want to be them? What’s wrong with me? I must be sick, sick, sick.”   

“I think it makes complete sense, Andrea. So maybe you should try to stop beating up on you. And maybe, just maybe that might help you to feel less scared, like the person you’re really scared of these days is you.”