Lying

He sits fidgeting in the chair, alternately looking down at his hands and staring at me. I don’t usually treat 17 year old boys, but his mother was frantic when she called, convinced that her oldest son David was going to commit suicide. 

After several minutes of silence I say, “Your mother was very worried about you. Have you been thinking of killing yourself?”

He wrings his hands, continuing to move jerkily in the chair. “It’s a lie,” he says, almost in a whisper. 

“What’s a lie?”

He swallows. Tears brim in his eyes. “I don’t want to kill myself. I just made that up.” Pause. “Like always.” Pause. “I always lie. I don’t know if I can tell the truth. You know, like that guy Santos, the Congressman,” his words now coming out in a rush. “I wasn’t sure I could tell you the truth. I’m still not sure, but I’m going to try. I have to try. I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the country when I grow up. I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the school right now!”

I flash on a childhood friend when we were both in the third grade. She told the class she had three siblings, although she only had one. Since we lived in the same building the teacher asked me if it was true. I didn’t want to get my friend into trouble so I said I didn’t know. I felt compassion for my friend. I’d seen her mother scream at her and beat her with a belt. I feel a similar compassion for this young man who sits across from me. I’ve known compulsive liars, people who wanted to gain an advantage over others or who enjoyed the power of putting one over on someone. But my guess so far is that isn’t David. 

“Have you always lied?” I ask David gently.

“It’s been worse since high school. But… but I guess I always lied at home. I lied to protect my Mom, to make her feel better. I’d tell her about my friends in school, about how well I did playing soccer. Those were all lies.” Pause. “I know I didn’t make her feel better by telling her I wanted to kill myself. I guess I do sometimes think I would be better off not being here, but I know I said it like I was going to do it any minute now.”

“Why did you want to give her that impression, David?”

“I guess I felt desperate, like I have to talk to someone, to someone I can tell the truth.”

“And what is the truth?”

“I’m a bad person. I hate so many people. I hate my Dad, my younger sister, the jocks in school. Sometimes I even hate my Mom and that makes me really bad.”

“Because?”

“Because she tries so hard. And I know how much she loves me.”

“She tries so hard to…?”

“To make everyone happy. To get along with my Dad. To keep him from yelling at me. But she can’t. And in the end she’ll say, ‘Well you know your Dad just wants what’s best for you’ or ‘You know your Dad’s under a lot of pressure.’”

“So in the end you feel she sides with him.”

He nods his head. 

“And that feels pretty awful.”

“Yes. But I shouldn’t hate her for that. She’s just trying to do what’s best, what’s best for everyone.”

“But maybe doing what’s best for everyone isn’t what’s best for you.”

“I guess.”

“What would you like her to do?” 

“To tell my Dad to fucking lay off!! Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I apologize. I…”

“You don’t have to apologize, David. Here you get to say anything and everything you want.” Pause. “Has your Dad always picked on you, David?”

He nods. “He’s a college football coach. As you can see I’m not exactly made in his image. I’m this little, puny, ugly kid who’s sucked at sports all my life. He’s the life of the party. I’d rather go read a book. He can’t stand looking at me. So I make things up. I make myself more than I am.”

“I’m so sorry, David, sorry that your Dad can’t appreciate you for the caring, sensitive person you are.”

“Sensitive is the last thing my father wants me to be. He constantly accuses me of being too sensitive. And if I’m so caring, how come I just scared my Mom?”

“My guess is that you lie as a way of expressing your anger, as a way of fighting back and not being the puny, too-sensitive kid.”  

“I’m not sure I get that.”

“That’s fine, David. It’s kind of a heavy statement to throw at you just as we’re ending this session. We can pick up from here next time.”

“So you will work with me?”

“Definitely. It would be my pleasure.”

Welcome Home

Thea, a woman in her mid-thirties, with porcelain skin, curly red hair and deep blue eyes, glares at me from across the room, her brows knitted, her arms folded tightly across her chest. We have been sitting in silence since she entered my office and threw herself into the chair. Only a few minutes have elapsed, but the time hangs heavily in the room. 

Concerned that we fall into a power struggle of who speaks first, I decide to break the silence. “You’re obviously having lots of feelings, Thea. Can you talk about what’s going on for you?”

“Why should I?” she retorts.

“Well, that is usually what we do here. You tell me what you’re thinking and feeling and we try to better understand you.”

“Don’t be a smart ass! You know goddamn well what I mean.”

Thea is correct. I do know what she means. She is a therapist herself and someone I have seen in treatment for several years. “OK,” I say. “So this is our first session back since I returned from vacation and you’re clearly angry with me. But that doesn’t help me understand if this break in our schedule was particularly difficult for you and if so, why.”    

“I ran into Cathy in the grocery store. She knows that I see you – and obviously knew you were away - but why she found it necessary to tell me that you were presenting a paper I have no idea.”

Cathy is a colleague who did in fact know that I presented a paper during part of my time away, although I too have no idea why she needed to give Thea that information. However, she did, and it is now our job to understand the feelings churning inside Thea. Although I’m always eager to treat other therapists, they do present their own unique set of difficulties, particularly in a small therapeutic community where you don’t always know who knows whom. 

“So what did it mean to you that I presented a paper?” I ask.

“You could have told me!” Thea replies, her voice still sharp and raised. “It was embarrassing that Cathy knew more about you than I did.”

I keep my face impassive, although I’m immediately puzzled. Certainly Thea knows that Cathy would know more about me than Thea herself. I say nothing, hoping that Thea will continue her self-exploration.

“What?” she says. “You’re not going to say anything?”

This whole session feels like a land mine. If I stay silent, Thea might well experience me as withholding and provocative, much as I am experiencing her. If I confront her on what seems an extremely unlikely reason for her anger, she could experience me as both challenging and negating. If I guess at what I think might be going on here, I am doing her work for her.

Perhaps the most productive course is to follow Thea’s direction. “I thought you might say more about what was embarrassing about Cathy knowing I was giving a paper while you didn’t.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Thea, I know that you’re angry with me and I’m not trying to be dense here, but you’ll need to say more before I can understand what it meant for you not to know I was presenting a paper. You also didn’t know where I was going in my absence, if Cathy told you that would you have been equally angry?”   

“She did tell me. And, no, I didn’t care about that. Oh!” Thea’s pale skin turns scarlet.

I think of how difficult Thea has made this session. I think about her being many years my junior in terms of professional experience. I think about her highly successful older sister, Emily. I have a sense of what’s going on here, but realize how important it is for me not to be the wise, all-knowing therapist.

“Now I really am embarrassed,” Thea says, dropping her eyes, her anger fading. “I’m mad that you got to give a paper and I didn’t, just like with Emily, who got to read her reports in school and get into the best universities and snare the best academic job in the country. I’m sorry. I was behaving like a brat.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. You had feelings. You brought them here and you figured them out. I’d say you did just what you needed to do.”

“But it’s not right if I put my feelings about Emily onto you. And I’m sure I put them on other people too.”

“Perhaps what you’re saying is that we still need to work on your feelings about Emily, as well as feeling competent and capable and good about yourself.”