Too Close

 

“I went out with Charles again last night,” Ashley begins. “You know the guy I met on Match who I’ve been out with a few times.”

“I remember,” I say, nodding at the computer screen. “You kind of liked him.”

“I guess, but he was a little too much last night.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. Like he started telling me all about his childhood, which was pretty terrible. He was physically abused by his mother, like really bad. And he wanted to know all about me. I’m not sure I was ready for that.”

“What made you uncomfortable?”

“What if we don’t work out? Why should I tell him all about me? Does he really need to know that my mother died of cancer when I was four and that my father wanted nothing to do with me?”

“I’d say there would be no reason for him not to know.”

“I never understand why you feel I should be blabbing my whole life to anyone and everyone.”

“Well, if you’re not presenting who you are to people it’s kind of impossible to get close to them and it takes a lot of energy to be play acting through a large part of your life.”

“Aren’t you play acting? Isn’t being a therapist all play acting?”

“In what way?”

“You could be in terrible pain right now, physical or emotional, and you wouldn’t tell me about it, right?”

“That’s true. We do all have roles that we inhabit in our lives and…”

“See, I told you! So I’m no different than you or anyone else!”

“We all have roles that we inhabit. Being a therapist is one

role, just as being an attorney is another. And, no, in our professional roles we’re not telling everyone everything about us. You’re not going to be in front of a judge and say, “Your Honor I can’t try this case today because I had to put my dog down yesterday and I’m a total basket case. But yesterday, when you put your dog down – obviously I’m just using that as an example – would you have been able to call a friend and say I need to talk?”

“I don’t have a dog,” Ashley says matter-of-factly. “I don’t want a dog.” Pause. “Actually, dogs are kind of like that guy last night. They want too much. They’re always there, always begging. I guess you’ll say that’s my need to keep my distance.”

“Yes, I would. And there’s the question of why that distance feels so necessary for you.”

“It just popped in my head that we’re back in your office next week. I don’t like that idea either. This is much more convenient. I don’t have to drive to and from your office. I don’t have to waste time sitting in your waiting room. I just turn on my computer screen and here you are.”

“So I assume by bringing that up right now, you’re making the connection that returning to my office feels closer – literally and figuratively - than virtual therapy.”

“Right. And I’d prefer continuing just as we are.”

“So do you have any thoughts about what makes closeness so uncomfortable?”

“It’s messy. People are just so needy. They want so much. Just like a dog.”

“Are you needy, Ashley? Do you want so much?”

“Me? No way! I can take care of myself.”

“I think you learnt that early on. If there’s no one really there for you, you learn that you have to take care of yourself.”

“Right!”

“But there’s a problem with that, Ashley. When you were four years old you couldn’t take care of yourself. You were a helpless, dependent little girl who just lost the most important person in your life. That little girl is still inside you. She still wants and needs and longs for someone to care for her…”

“Ugh! That’s disgusting. I hope that’s not true. And if it is true I want her gone, poof! Like she never existed.”

“I wonder, Ashley, if that’s exactly the reason you didn’t like the man you saw last night and the reason you don’t want to return to in office visits and the reason you don’t want a dog, all of that brings you closer to that dependent, childhood part of yourself.”

“So what should I do about it?”

“Well, first we’ll resume in office visits and we’ll talk about how that feels for you. And when you’re with someone and feel the need to get away, maybe you can try to pay attention to what you’re really trying to get away from. I suspect it might be the needy part of yourself.”

“What if I just avoided people?”

“Well, what do you feel when you avoid people? What did you feel when we were locked down in the pandemic?”

“Lonely. Like something was missing.”

“I guess that’s your answer.”

Return

Emma is uncharacteristically late for her first session after my vacation. Usually a psychologically aware woman, she has now spent 20 minutes talking about the plans for her daughter’s high school graduation party, chatting about the guest list and the menu.

I interrupt her. “How did you feel coming today?” I ask.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, I didn’t want to come. I did very well in your absence. In fact, I was thinking that this should be our last session.”

I groan inwardly. I have seen Emma for four years and there is no question she has come a long way – more able to stand up for herself, more self-confident, less intimidated by her husband. But she is a patient who has been in therapy with several therapists over the years, a patient who knows that her more long-standing issues of desire for and fear of intimacy remain stubbornly unchanged. In fact, she is enacting that issue at this moment – feeling abandoned during my vacation she has closed off the needy part of herself and now seeks to reject me just as she felt rejected.

And, it’s worked. I do feel rejected. I feel hurt that she should want to leave me, hurt that she could discard me so easily after the relationship we’ve built up over time. And whose feelings are these?  Always a complicated question. Yes, I do believe that she is rejecting me just as she felt rejected by me and, earlier in her life, by a too-busy, self-involved mother. But I have my feelings too. I do go on vacation. I do have my own life. But my patients matter to me. I care about them. Besides, I don’t like good-byes. 

“So why do you think you would decide this today?” I ask.

“I told you. I did very well in your absence.”

“I’m sure you did. You’ve never been someone who can’t function without me. But you know yourself well enough to question what affect my vacation would have had on this sudden decision.”

“I knew you’d bring that up,” she says, sighing theatrically.

I remain silent.

“What?” she says.

I gesture with my hand for her to continue.

“Why is it that everything I do gets to be analyzed while nothing you do gets put on the table?”

Surprised by her question, I ask, “What don’t I put on the table?”

“Like how do you just get to go on vacation, entirely arbitrarily? You get to decide when you go, for how long, and regardless of what’s happening in my life or any of your patients’. You’ve always telling me I cut myself off from my feelings, well it seems you’d have to cut yourself from your feelings as well.”

Alternate responses flit through my mind. I could pursue her anger which is quite apparent and might well be fruitful. But I worry she would experience that as evasive and defensive. Or I could respond directly to the issue she raised.

“You make a good point, Emma,” I say thoughtfully. “I am the one who arbitrarily decides when I go on vacation and I do put my patients’ lives aside during that time – I put your life aside, just as you often experienced your mother doing. But it doesn’t mean I stop caring about you and it certainly doesn’t mean I feel closed off to you when I return. Quite the contrary, I’m eager to hear about you and what’s been going on in your life and in your mind. And just as you feel hurt and discarded when I go on vacation, I feel hurt and discarded when you announce that you’re unilaterally going to end our four year relationship in one session.”

“You do?” Emma asks incredulously.

“I’m sorry that surprise you so much, Emma. It’s so hard for you to take in my caring. I suspect you’re afraid that if you acknowledge you’re loveable, you’d have to give up hope that your mother would ever love you as you needed and wanted to be loved.”       

Emma’s eyes fill with tears. “This might sound silly, but right that moment when you said that, I felt my heart melt, like something opened in me; something opened, but something made me very sad too.”

“So maybe right at that moment you did feel my caring, but also felt the sadness of your mother’s inability to cherish you as the loveable child you were and are.”