We’re Pregnant

“I feel like such an idiot being here,” Harvey says. “Elise, my wife, has been in therapy forever and I’ve always made fun of her, never believed in it, thought you should be able to solve your own problems. But I throw in the towel. I can’t handle it. My wife is pregnant or, as she insists, we’re pregnant. That weirds me out in itself. I’m not pregnant. I get what she means, but it’s bad enough watching her body change. I sure wouldn’t want those kinds of changes happening to my body.”

Well, I think to myself, that’s an interesting beginning. Body issues for sure, but sounds like there’s a lot more going on.

“Elise’s therapist recommended you. Said you were the best. So I guess you know each other. Does that mean you’d talk to each other about us?”

“No, Harvey, what you say here is confidential. I wouldn’t share it with Elise’s therapist or anyone else.” With some paranoia thrown in, I suspect this man has pretty deep seeded problems.

“We wanted to get pregnant. We’ve been trying for a while. But now that it’s here, I have lots of second thoughts. But it’s not something you can change your mind about.”

“What’s freaking you out about the pregnancy?”

“Well, I worry whether I’ll be a good father, how much a baby will change our lives. We have a pretty good life. I make good money. I’m a financial planner. We travel a lot. We like to play. We…we have great sex. Or we used to.”

“You used to?”

“Yeah. I haven’t touched my wife for a while. Like pretty much as soon as we knew she was pregnant and she’s going on six months. First I was afraid I’d hurt the baby, although my wife and the doctor said that wasn’t possible. And now, now I don’t know… I feel bad saying this, but I guess I find her rather grotesque. You’re sure you won’t say anything to anyone, right?”

“Sounds like it’s hard for you to trust, Harvey.”

“Now that’s true. Hasn’t seemed to me there’s ever a reason to trust people. In my business people lie all the time. Out for the buck. Ready to say anything, stab anyone in the back.”

“And before you were in the business?”

“Yeah, I know, you want to know about my childhood. I could never understand how that’s relevant, but no question my childhood was awful. My mother was schizophrenic, in and out of hospitals. She died in one of those hospitals. My father, he was a sadistic bastard. I was the middle of three boys. It was called equal opportunity abuse. Probably worse for me and my younger brother. We were bed wetters. My father would beat us senseless. And then he devised this great humiliation technique. He’d make us sit on the stoop of our house, take out our penis and sit with a ribbon tied around it. Didn’t help the bedwetting.”

“That’s horrible, Harvey. What tremendous shame to inflict on a child.”

“Can’t argue with you there. By 17 I was gone. Never looked back. Didn’t do badly for myself. Until now.”

“How much younger than you is your younger brother?”

“Five, six years. We haven’t stayed in touch either. Probably don’t want to remind each other of what it was like.”

“Do you remember your mother’s pregnancy?”

“No. I don’t remember much of my mother. Probably wanted to put that away too.”

“Do you remember what any of her breaks were like?”

“I remember she’d be out of control, scared, screaming. She’d tear at her face, like she wanted it to be gone. Maybe like she wanted to be gone, but I just thought of that now. So can you help me, doc?”

“I think so. But I don’t think this is going to be an easy road for you. I’d say you have long standing issues about your body and lots of fears of bringing a child into a world you see as scary and unforgiving. And you might be scared of the child as well.”

“Of the child?”

“Not wanting to bring another person like either of your parents into the world.”

“I worried about that schizophrenic thing. But my wife said it was worth the risk.”

“So maybe it feels to you that your wife will bring another being like one of your parents into the world and maybe that makes your wife scary and untrustworthy as well.”

“That’s too deep for me.”

“That’s okay. We have lots of time.”

“No, we don’t. The baby’s not waiting for anyone.”

“That’s true. But you can’t put too much pressure on yourself. You can only do what you can do.”      

You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong

“The most awful thing happened to me last week,” Francis begins. “I was walking out of Macy’s and a security guard stopped me. He asked me to open my purse. I looked at him like he was crazy and asked why. I even wondered if he was a security guard or if he was just wearing the uniform and wanted to steal my wallet or something. He kept insisting. I asked him if he thought I stole something which mortified me and he just kept asking me to open my purse. I finally did and he looked through everything. I felt like a thief. And then he said, ‘Thank you, ma’am, I guess there was a mistake.’ I was shaking. I ran out of the mall. When I got into my car I burst into tears. It was awful. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. I replay it over and over in my head.” 

Francis is a conventional woman nearing fifty who came into therapy when the last of her children left for college, wondering what was next for her in life. “It sounds awful. Can you say a bit more about what you felt?” I ask.

“Humiliated. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. How could anyone think I’m a thief? And I felt scared. Like I said I wondered if the security guard was an imposter and if he’d rob me. I know how crazy that sounds, but it didn’t seem any crazier than me stealing something.” 

Francis was the “good girl” who evolved into the “good wife and mother.” It is hard to imagine her doing anything rebellious, let alone illegal. “Did you feel angry as being unjustly accused?”

“I guess I did. You know I don’t do anger very well.”

“And since the incident, what is it that you feel when you replay it in your head?”

“The same thing, humiliated and scared. I don’t feel the anger all that much.”

“Does the incident remind you of anything in your past?”

“No! I never stole anything in my life, if that’s what you mean.”

“No. That wasn’t what I meant. What made you think I was suggesting that?”

“I don’t know,” she says, starting to cry. “I just feel so awful. I feel like a criminal. I feel dirty. I know it’s crazy. It was a mistake. I need to let it go.”

“So you understand that what you’re feeling is an overreaction, but we need to figure out what’s causing that overreaction. I’d say it was something from your past, something that made you feel guilty or ashamed or both. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. You could feel you did something wrong even if you didn’t.”

“When you just said I didn’t do anything wrong, I felt this tremendous relief, like a burden was taken from me. But I have no idea why. What do I feel so guilty about? What did I do that was so bad? I was always the good kid.”

Various of my childhood and adolescent transgressions flit through my mind: blaming a friend’s sister for my mischief, wearing make-up when I wasn’t allowed to, lying about having a boyfriend. I don’t carry guilt for any of these infractions, but I’m sure far more serious “sins” exist in the cauldron of both my and my patient’s unconscious. “It doesn’t have to be anything you did, Francis. It could be something you wished for or dreamt about. It could be a fleeting thought, like ‘I wish you were dead.’”

“I killed my younger sister’s turtle,” Francis blurts out. “It was an accident. The turtle got out of its little house and I accidentally crushed it with my rocking chair. My sister was really mad. She said I was a murderer. My mother was mad too. I kept saying it was an accident, but they didn’t believe me.”

“Another example of being blamed when you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Francis hesitates then quietly says, “I didn’t like that turtle. It smelled bad. And I don’t like things that crawl around like that. But it was an accident. I didn’t deliberately kill it.”

I wonder if the turtle is a stand-in for Francis’ childhood feelings about her sister – something that smells bad and crawls around – but I decide to leave that interpretation for another day. “But it sounds like you still felt guilty, both because you might have wished the turtle dead and because your sister and mother were so angry.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” she has almost plaintively.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” I say. I suspect this “good girl” has many forbidden thoughts and feelings, but that too is for another day.