Being Bad

I open my waiting room door to a slender young woman who looks up at me as though startled. With perfect posture she follows me into my office and sits gingerly on the chair I designate. She stares at me expectantly.
“How can I help you?” I ask, smiling.

“This is all confidential, right?” she asks quietly.

“Yes,” I say, immediately on guard.

“I’ve done something terrible.” 

I say nothing, my anxiety increasing. 

Silence.

“Do you want to tell me what that terrible thing was or would you prefer to give me some background information first?” I ask, trying to make us both more comfortable.

“Well, I’m Brenda Masters. I’m 29, a real estate broker. I work in my father’s company. I do pretty well,” she adds, smiling for the first time. “I like it. I did graduate from college because my parents wanted me to, but I kind of always wanted to go into the business. My older brother’s in the business too. My older sister is studying to be a doctor. She was always the brain. I own my condo – my Dad bought it for me – although I’d like to own a house one day. I date, but there’s no one special, not for a while.”

Pause.

“My life’s pretty good. That’s what makes this all the more strange.”

“Perhaps you need to tell me what “this” is.”

Taking a deep breath, she says, “About a month ago I parked downtown and went to do some shopping. I’m not sure how long I was gone, but when I got back there was a BMW convertible behind me and some fancy Porsche in front. They penned me in. I couldn’t move. Made me mad. I stood there a while hoping one of them would come back. No such luck. Finally I got into my car and tried to more a few inches up and back, up and back. But it was ridiculous. I couldn’t get anywhere.” 

Pause. 

“So then I stepped on the gas to see if I could move one of the cars a
little. And then I gave it more gas and before long I was ramming first one car and then the other. Bang! Bang!! Up and back, up and back. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I was obviously damaging my car too, but I didn’t care. I liked the feeling, the power. I liked showing them they couldn’t just push me around!” she says, quite animated at this point. “This time I was the one doing the pushing! And then I was out! I was free! It was a great feeling. I showed them!”

She pauses, seemingly trying to return to her previous calm and controlled state. “I guess I was lucky there weren’t many people around that day, maybe because it was raining. I told my Dad someone messed up my bumper and he had it fixed. No biggie.”

“And does it feel like ‘no biggie?’”

“Well, I guess I felt both thrilled and guilty. I decided not think about it. But I couldn’t. That’s the problem,” she says, lowering her head. “I’ve done it again. More than once. I look for the right place and the right day and I do it again. I know that’s not good. I know it’s wrong. And I know I’ll get in trouble. But it’s become like an obsession. Can you help me?”

“I think so, but first we have to understand why it’s become an obsession, why you feel so stimulated battering someone’s car. Do you have any thoughts?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen myself as an angry person. I was always the good girl. My brother used to tease me for being so good, said it made him look bad.”

“Do you know why you were so good?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because my brother was the boy and my sister was the smart one and I had to do something to distinguish myself, so I was good.”

“And what happened when you felt angry?”

“I didn’t get angry.”

“You never felt angry?”

“I never expressed it.”

“So what did you do with your anger?”

She hesitates. “I didn’t eat. And when that wasn’t okay, I ate and threw up.”

“Do you still do that?”

“Sometimes, but not much.”

“What’s going on in your life today when you eat and throw up.”

“I don’t know. I guess I feel fat.”

“Has your throwing up increased or decreased since you’ve been ramming cars?”

“Hmm. I might not have thrown up since that first time. Wow! You think there’s a connection?”

“Could be. You know, Brenda, you immediately struck me as a person very much in control, holding yourself back, reining yourself in. I wonder if both throwing up and ramming cars is a way for you to let go, to release some of the anger you’ve been sitting on your whole life.”

“But what do I have to feel angry about?”

“I guess that’s one of the things we’ll need to figure out.”

Untold

Peter is unusually quiet at the start his session. He looks down at his hands, then gazes out the window. I resist the temptation to ask him what is going on and remain silent with him. The silence grows more comfortable, the connection between us palpable.

“I know I’m going to tell you today. That doesn’t seem like such a problem. I guess the question is why I’ve never told you before. It’s been almost three years since I started seeing you. I know you’ll ask why I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m asking that myself.” Pause. “The answer isn’t obvious to me. If I hear myself say it never seemed like such a big deal, that seems ridiculous, even to me. If I say it was too hard to talk about, too embarrassing, too uncomfortable, I just don’t think that’s it.”

My discomfort increases as Peter continues speaking, trying to imagine what he might not have revealed. He’s talked about his rigid, explosive father; his removed, distanced mother; his bullying older brothers. I like Peter. Shy, reserved, anxious Peter has done well in his life. He’s a sociology professor at a local university, is married to a warm, accomplished woman, and thinking about having children. He worries about his anxiety, his tendency towards depression and his discomfort with the competition in the academic world.       

“I was molested by my Catholic priest,” he blurts out. “By my confessor. It’s like a joke. I wonder who he was confessing to.”

I’m shocked. Not by the revelation, but just as he’d anticipated, by his not having told me long before.

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” I say, “So sorry that you had to endure that experience.”

“And wonder why I didn’t tell you before.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Obviously the case in Pennsylvania brought it all back up. Not that I’d forgotten about it. Just brought it back to the forefront.”

“Leaving you feeling how?”

“Sad. Depressed. Disgusted. Angry. You name it. The feelings all victims describe.”

“And how do you feel telling me now?”

“I don’t know. Kind of numb I guess. It’s not like I thought about it every time I was in session. Occasionally it would go through my mind and I’d say, no, this isn’t a good time.”

“And when you thought it wasn’t a good time, why did you think you thought that?”

He shrugs. “Other things seemed more pressing? I really don’t know.”

Suddenly a thought comes to me. “Have you ever told anyone?”

“I told my wife. Before we got married. I thought she should know…”

“Can you finish that sentence?”

“See, this is exactly the problem. Once I tell, it all becomes about my having been abused by my priest.”

“What all becomes about your having been abused by your priest?” I ask, confused.

“Everything. My shyness. My depression. My anxiety. It’s not! It’s not only him. He didn’t cause everything,” he says angrily.

“Of course not,” I reply. “Being sexually abused – however significant - was one of the events that affected your life, along with many other things.”

Peter stares at me. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes, of course.” I pause. “I just had a thought. That priest had so much power over you as a child, perhaps it’s that you don’t want to give him the power to have made you the adult you are, you don’t want him to control your adult self.”  

Tears run down Peter’s cheeks. “That’s right. That’s exactly right. I could never put it into words, but that’s what it is. The bastard manipulated me as a child. I didn’t want him to matter anymore,” he says burying his face in his hands, sobbing.

“I don’t think you’re going to like what I say next, but the problem is, that by not speaking about him, you have unconsciously given him the power to continue to silence you, to continue to hide as if you’ve done something wrong  - which you haven’t.”

“No! That can’t be! Oh my God, you’re right. I’ve let the bastard continue to control me!”

“Well, you’re now unsilenced. You’ve spoken. You told me. We have a lot of work to do around this Peter – and I don’t mean that he’s the only factor influencing your life – but he has been a significant force and it’s time for you to speak.”

“I’m so sorry, so sorry I never told you.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. As I always say, you can only do what you can do and you’ve now spoken.”

Always Worried

“I really appreciate your seeing me again,” Estelle Peterson says wringing her hands. I had previously seen Mrs. Peterson for a number of years. Although we made some progress in curbing her anxiety, she remained a constant worrier.

“My daughter’s pregnant,” she says.

“Congratulations. I remember you were afraid you’d never have a grandchild.”

“Yes, yes, that’s true,” she says dismissively. “But she lives in Florida.”

“And that means?”

“Zika!”

“Oh, you’re worried about her getting the Zika virus.” Concern about  Zika is certainly understandable, but I suspect it will only fuel Mrs. Peterson already considerable anxiety.

“And having a deformed child! I can’t imagine anything worse. I told her she has to leave Florida. Right now. Right away. She doesn’t have to worry about me, but she has to take care of her baby! I told her to go stay with her sister in Connecticut.”

“And she said?”

“That it wouldn’t be a practical. That she and Jonathon have jobs. That they just couldn’t pick up leave.”

“I told she could just quit her job and Jonathon can stay here, that she’d be all right with her sister. Then she got mad at me and told me to stop it. I told her I couldn’t stop it, that I couldn’t bear to spend the next six months worrying about her baby. They hadn’t even told me right away, so I’ll probably worry anyway, worry if one of those mosquitos got her early on. But she won’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m going to do. How am I going to get through her pregnancy?”

 “How’s your daughter feeling about being pregnant?”

“What? Oh, she’s pretty good. She said that some of her morning sickness was pretty bad, but I told her not to worry about that, that was to be expected. I remember when I was pregnant with her and her sister. I thought I would die. But I didn’t. And she won’t die either. But I might die of a heart attack if I have to worry about the baby for six months.”   

I remember now. It wasn’t only Estelle’s constant worrying that was so difficult, but also her need to make everything about herself. Everyone’s pain becomes her pain. She sees herself as being constantly worried about others, but really she’s concerned about dealing with her own anxiety and discomfort.

“So how can we help you to survive the next six months?”

“No, you have to help me convince Diana. Tell me what I can say to her to make her leave?”

“Even if I could do that, which I can’t, it seems to me we both need to respect your daughter as an adult, to respect her decisions and to try to be as supportive of her as you can.”

“How can I respect her decision when it’s endangering her child, when it will leave me, her mother, a nervous wreck until the baby is born?”

“Do you generally respect your daughter’s decisions? Did you respect her decision to marry her husband, to become a teacher, to move to Florida?”

“I definitely wanted her to move to Florida. I wanted to keep an eye on her. Becoming a teacher was okay, although I wondered if she couldn’t do better. I guess that was true of Jonathon too, but he worked out pretty good.”

Knowing that I am most likely talking to myself, I continue on, “Mrs. Peterson, respecting your daughter’s decisions means recognizing that she’s an adult apart from you who has a right to make a decision even if it is different from the one you’d make.”

“Even if it endangers her child? No, I can’t respect her decision.”

And I don’t respect Mrs. Peterson’s way of being in the world, making it difficult for me to espouse respect when I don’t feel it myself. Perhaps I can try to accept Mrs. Peterson for who she is, and thereby move us both towards a more tolerant view of others. 

“Mrs. Peterson. I suspect that you’re not going to change your daughter’s mind about not leaving Florida. Perhaps I can help you to accept that fact and perhaps we can work on managing your anxiety.”

“You’re not being helpful.”

“Sorry. I can only do what I can do.”

“You used to say that to me all the time, that I had to accept my limitations, that I couldn’t control everything, that I could only do what I could do.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“But maybe this time I can do more.”

“I guess we’ll continue this discussion next week.”