Untold II

“Thank you for seeing me for an extra session this week,” Peter begins.

“No problem.”

“I haven’t been able to think of anything else but what you said, that by not talking about my priest abusing me I’ve done exactly the opposite of what I intended, I’ve let him continue to control my life.” Pause. “That makes me sick. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“And feeling …?”

“Sick. Angry! Scared. I keep remembering what he did to me. I try to figure out how many times it happened. I wonder why I never told my parents, anyone.” Pause. “I guess I know the answer to the last one, I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“Do you feel sad for you as the abused child?”

“I hate when you put it like that! That’s not all I am!”

“That’s true. It would have been better for me to say, do you feel sad for the child in you who was abused?”

Peter’s eyes well with tears. “You’re amazing. You listen and understand and take responsibility for even a little mistake.”

“Unlike the priest who took responsibility for nothing.”

“Unlike the priest. Unlike my parents who could never understand.”

Silence.

“Would it be helpful if you told me what actually happened between you and the priest or do you feel you’re not ready?”

Silence.

“He’d touch me. Usually until I climaxed. And then he’d make me touch him. Sometimes – I don’t know how often – he’d tell me to kneel – Catholics are good at that – and then he’d… he’d, you know, he’d make me use my mouth. I hated that. It was disgusting.”

“Thank you for telling me Peter. I know how hard it was for you. How do you feel now having told me?”

“Relieved. I knew I’d have to tell you. It feels like a relief to have it over.”

Silence.

“Can I ask you what you’re thinking?” I ask.

“I was actually wondering what you’re thinking. I was afraid you’d think I was disgusting.”

“You’re not in any way disgusting, Peter.”

“I was afraid my wife would think that too. I wonder if she thinks about it when we make love. I wonder if a part of her recoils from me.”

I wonder to myself if Peter thinks about the abuse when they make love, but decide it’s too soon to ask that question. “Does she seem to recoil from you?”

He shakes his head. “No, not at all.” Pause. “But, but it’s hard for me to have … to have oral sex. Either to give it or receive it. I know it’s because of the abuse. Sometimes I force myself because I know she likes it, but it seems kind of disgusting to me.” Pause. “Actually, when she does it to me it feels good at the time, but then, then afterwards I don’t feel good at all.”

“You feel guilty?”

“Definitely.”

“And you felt guilty with the priest as well?”

“Yes. Guilty and ashamed. I was afraid someone would find out and think I was disgusting. Afterwards I’d come out from the church… If it was sunny I’d wonder how that was possible. It seemed so dark where I’d just been. I couldn’t understand how the sun could be shining. I didn’t want it to be sunny. I wanted to hide.”

“Peter, very often the hardest thing childhood sexual victims struggle with is the pleasure that they themselves felt. Like how could I have been abused if part of me enjoyed it?”

“That’s exactly right! How can it be abuse if I, if I climaxed?”

“Because your genitals were being stimulated and your body responded just as it’s supposed to. You were also a frightened, lonely child and some esteemed authority figure was paying attention to you, making you feel special and bringing you pleasure.”

“No, that’s not completely right. I didn’t feel special at all. I felt I was being singled out because I was disgusting and he knew I was disgusting. Don’t forget he was my confessor.”

“And what had you done that made you feel disgusting?”

“I touched myself.”

“You masturbated just like every child. I’m sure the priest made you feel guilty and ashamed of doing what was entirely normal, but the horrible irony is that he was the one who was doing what was horrible, illegal, destructive. That’s enraging. I feel enraged for you.”

“I feel as though I’ve been in a trance this session. Like I want to shake myself and come back to reality.”

“I think what you’re saying, Peter, is that you’ve been back being your child self. I’m sure that will be helpful to you - and to us - because it’s that part of you that was damaged and needs to heal.”

Shame

“I love you,” Melanie says, looking downward.

Twenty-five year old Melanie has been my patient for two years, a lovely young woman struggling with anxiety and depression.  One of six children raised on a farm by parents who saw their offspring as laborers, rather than cherished beings, Melanie has come to rely on me as one of the few people who is consistently in her corner. Professing her love for me doesn’t take me by surprise.

“Thank you, Melanie,” I say, “that’s a lovely gift.”

“No,” she replies. “It’s much more complicated.”

I wait, unsure what she means.

“I said that to my last therapist,” she says hesitantly. “You know, I’ve talked to you about Dr. Hopkins. I saw him for a couple of years before you.”

I nod.

“But I never told you what happened, why I left.” She pauses. “We had an affair.”

I’m shocked. Not that I’ve never heard of therapists inappropriately crossing sexual boundaries, but I’m surprised Melanie never told me something of such significance.

“I’m so sorry, Melanie. How come you never told me before?”

“I was too ashamed.”

The victim blaming herself. Not unusual I think to myself. “Do you realize that Dr. Hopkins abused you?”

“No. It wasn’t like that,” she protests. “I told you, I loved him. And he loved me back. That was the most wonderful surprise of my life. Someone I so looked up to and admired actually loved me!”

“Melanie, how did your therapy with Dr. Hopkins end?”

“Well, for a while we saw each on the outside and I continued to have my regular therapy sessions. Dr. Hopkins was very clear that we couldn’t do anything sexual in the office, that we had to remain professional during our sessions.”

I am beyond furious at this so-called therapist, but hope that I am successful at concealing my feelings.

“But then Dr. Hopkins told me he didn’t think I needed therapy anymore. So I quit and just saw him on the outside.”

Still seething, I wonder if Dr. Hopkins thought his prowess as a lover had “cured” Melanie or whether he just found it too difficult to keeps his hands off her during their sessions.

“But then one day,” she continues, “he said that we couldn’t see each other anymore. He told me his wife was sick and that he felt too guilty being with me. I was devastated. I mean, I knew he was married. I knew it wasn’t like we’d be together forever and ever. But I loved him so much. And I thought he loved me. So how could he just walk away?”

“When you say you thought he loved you, are you now questioning that?”

Melanie starts to cry. “I was a fool. I know I was a fool. Did I really think a smart, educated man more than twice my age would be in love with me? He wanted my body. But I just wanted so much for him to love me, that I deluded myself into thinking he did. That’s what I’m ashamed of, being such a fool.”

“There’s an awful lot to deal with here, Melanie, and I’m sure we’ll return to this many times, but I want to come back to us before the session ends. So what did it mean to you to tell me you loved me? And what response did you hope for – or fear?”

“I’m not sure. I know I don’t want to sleep with you, but I do want you to love me. I guess I want to crawl into your lap and have you stroke my hair and tell me you love me, just as you’d tell your own daughter. Is that wrong?”

“No, Melanie, what you wish for can never be wrong. But acting on that wish is different. You wanted Dr. Hopkins to love you, which really meant you wanted him to care about you, to cherish you and to act in your best interest, not his. He did abuse you, Melanie. He took advantage of your need, of your vulnerability and crossed what should have been an unbreakable boundary. As for us, the wish to crawl into my lap and be my daughter is a more than understandable wish for someone who was so neglected as a child. But if I were to act on that wish I would not be acting in your best interest, because I would be giving you the false hope that you can go back to being a child and get from me what you couldn’t get from either of your parents.”

“That makes me sad.”

“I’m sure it does. Mourning what you never got and never can get, is always sad.”

Truth Revealed

Mrs. Cortez settles herself uncomfortably in the chair across from me, fidgeting nervously with her fingers. “I never expected to be in a therapist’s office,” she says. “Especially not for this.”

I smile at her. “Take your time. I can see you’re anxious,” I say reassuringly.

She sighs deeply. “My husband and I came from Mexico a long time ago. We wanted to have children in a place where they’d have more opportunity. We’ve done well. I’m the office manager of a large cardiologists’ office, my husband drives for FedEx. My daughter graduated from college. My son’s in college now.” She looks down at her hands. “It’s about my son,” she says, barely audible. “He…he told me he was gay.”

She glances up at me.

“It was after the Orlando killings, in the… the nightclub. He said he couldn’t stay silent. He couldn’t keep hiding who he was. He cried like a baby. I was shocked. I held him, told him I loved him, that I loved him whoever he was. But it’s so confusing to me. It’s against my religion. It’s against my culture. I know Pope Francis said who are we to judge and I’m trying not to, but it feels so unnatural to me. And he’s afraid to tell my husband, which I understand. But now I have this secret from my husband and I don’t like that either.”

“I can see how much pain you’re in, Mrs. Cortez.”

“Please call me Daniella. I just told you the biggest secret of my life, Mrs. Cortez is much too formal.”

“Of course, Daniella,” I respond. I like this woman. Although we come from vastly different backgrounds with vastly different values, I appreciate both her pain and her conflict. From a place of love, she’s struggling to take in a new reality, to expand her view of what’s acceptable, to integrate her new information about her son – her gay son – with who she always understood him to be.

“I know it’s hard,” I say, “But your son isn’t a different person from who he was before he told you he was gay.”

“It feels like he is. I look at him and I wonder…” Pause. “I imagine… I wonder who he’s been with and how. It kind of makes me sick. My son? How could my son kiss another man? Could he put another man’s… No, I can’t say it. I can’t even think it.” Pause. “I haven’t been to church since he told me.”

“Because?”

“I have all these impure thoughts, all these images. If I go to confession, what will I say? I don’t want to tell the priest.”

“I thought you said Pope Francis said who are we to judge.”

“That’s Pope Francis. Not all priests are like that.”

“So you’re afraid the priest will condemn your son, just like you’re afraid your husband will.”

“Yes. If I’m having all these problems, my husband is so much more traditional. And he’s a man. I know what men say about gays. All those jokes. And that’s something else. I worry about my son. He’ll have such a harder life. And Mexicans aren’t having such an easy time in this country right now. Then you add being gay. I’m scared for him.”

“Daniella, this may seem like an odd question, but can you say what you are hoping to get from therapy?

“I needed to tell somebody. It’s been such a burden.” Pause. “And I guess I want you to help me accept my son.” She cries silently. “He’s a good boy. I love him. I keep wishing this was a dream. That it will go away. But I know it won’t. I know I won’t change him. I want to accept him. And I want to figure out how to tell my husband.”

“Do you feel ashamed that your son is gay, Daniella?” I ask.

She nods. “I know you’re supposed to be born that way. But I keep wondering if it was something I did, something my husband did. Did I keep him too close, was my husband too strict?”

“There are no answers to those questions. But I wonder if we can understand how shame came to play such an important role in your life.”

She looks down. “I’ve always felt ashamed. Ashamed of my background, my poverty, my alcoholic father. Ashamed of being different, of not being born in this country. I always wanted to fit in. And now there’s my son. Another difference – for him and for me.”

“So hopefully as we talk about these issues and you find more peace, you’ll also be able to be more accepting of your son.”     

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.     

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.” 

An Eye for an Eye

“I’ll never be able to have sex again,” sobs 22 year old Ashley, her face, buried in her hands with her long brown hair falling forwards, her voice barely audible. “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. I know better. I’m not some dumb freshman, for God’s sake. I know you don’t get drunk at a frat party and go have unprotected sex with some guy you’ve never met before. My life is over!” she wails. 

It has been a month since Ashley confirmed that she has herpes. We have been dealing with nothing else since her diagnosis. She is understandably distraught, unable to move beyond the feeling that she has forever ruined her life.  

I think about some of the patients who have, over the years, told me about having herpes: The 60 year old woman who felt forever dirtied and punished by God. The session with a man who began by saying he needed to tell me his “secret,” and was then for so evasive, that I became afraid he was going to tell me he had committed murder. The young woman who said she contracted herpes after she had been drugged and raped, only to tell me months later that she had fabricated that story to hide her shame.  All tragic stories that forever cast a shadow over the person’s life. And now there is Ashley.

“I can’t believe I’ll never be able to have sex again. I’m only 22. I’ll never get married. Never have children.”

“Ashley, I’m by no means minimizing the pain and difficulty of having herpes, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have sex or get married or have children,” I say, trying to temper Ashley’s overwhelming feelings of despair.

“And risk doing to someone else what that asshole did to me! Never!!”

I think about the anger that almost invariably accompanies contracting herpes: the 60 year old who talked of being punished by God, my fantasy that my male patient might have committed murder, the young woman who fabricated a story of rape. Rage makes its way into the experience one way or another.

“I certainly understand your angry at that guy.”

“Yeah, I’m angry at him. Lot of good that will do me.”

“Well, it’s important that you’re aware of your anger, rather than being scared of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re angry. You’d love to get back as this guy, but there’s really no way to do that. So you feel powerless and that makes you even more angry.”

“So, yeah, and what does all that mean?”

“You notice, Ashley, that you’re also getting angry with me, which is perfectly all right, but I think it’s an indication of how angry you feel and how easy it is to direct your anger at me or someone else.”

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s just important that we look at what’s happening and try to understand it because I think it’s related to why you think you can never have sex again or get married or have children. I think you’re afraid – not consciously, of course – that your anger would spill over to a new partner, that perhaps you’d want to give him herpes, just as it was given to you.”

“No way” Ashley says, shaking her head emphatically, her hair flying from side to side. “I’d never, ever want to do that to someone else.” 

“I know you’d consciously never WANT to harm someone else, but your unconscious desire for revenge is another matter. If you’re afraid of wanting to hurt, you might try to protect others from what you’re afraid is your dangerousness by depriving yourself of the pleasure of sex and marriage and children.” 

“But how could I possibly have sex with someone and know I could harm him - especially if you’re saying I want to harm him?”

Although Ashley’s question might sound as though she’s still stuck, I hear some hope for she’s at least considering the possibility of having sex again. I reply, “It’s not that you’d want to harm a new partner, it’s that you might be afraid your anger could be expressed in that way. And the more we can deal with your anger here, the more you know about your anger, the less afraid you would be of expressing it unconsciously.”