“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.
Slim, youthful-looking Marjorie is trying to break her habit of reading obituaries.
“I’ve read them for more years than I can remember. And now that I’ll be turning 65 in a couple of weeks – I hate saying that but unfortunately it’s all too true - I keep focusing on how old people are when they die, trying to figure out how much time I have left. I remember when I turned 50. I knew that more than half my life was over. Maybe that’s when I started counting the years. There are lots of people who die in their 80s or even older, but there are people who die in their 70s too. That could mean I have less than ten years to live! That scares me, really scares me. I tell myself I should just stop reading those damn obituaries, but I’m not sure I can.”
“What are you afraid would happen if you stopped?” I ask.
“Nothing. Nothing would happen.”
Silence.
“I guess it’s like then I wouldn’t know,” she says.
“Wouldn’t know?” I echo.
“Wouldn’t know who died. Or when. Or how old they were. Or what they died of.”
“And that would mean what to you, Marjorie?”
She knits her brow and sighs in exasperation. “I just wouldn’t know,” she says emphatically. “I don’t like not knowing.”
“’I don’t like not knowing.’ That’s an interesting statement. Does not knowing makes you feel powerless, out of control? After all, what we can least know is when and how we’re going to die.”
“Just listening to you say that scared me. It’s like my heart fluttered. I always wanted to know.”
“And if you didn’t?”
“You know the first thing that popped into my head? My mother would die. I know that’s ridiculous, but that’s how I felt as a kid. My mother was sickly, although it wasn’t ever clear what was wrong with her. It was all hush, hush. Don’t upset your mother; don’t bother your mother; be good to your mother. From as early as I can remember I was scared that something would happen to her, that she’d die and it would be my fault. I think she had some kind of neurological disease. By the time I was in high school she was in a wheelchair. She died while I was away at college.”
“So your fears about dying started very early and your not knowing felt dangerous. You didn’t know what was wrong with your mother so you couldn’t protect her.” I suspect Marjorie was also angry with her mother for needing caretaking rather than providing it, but I leave that thought unsaid.
“So you think that’s when my fears about death started?”
“I think that’s when your fears about being out of control started, including your fears about death.” Here again I say nothing about my thought that Marjorie was also fearful of being out of control of her own anger.
“I was thinking about the office next door to you,” she says. “I think it’s a doctor’s office. They’re lots of patients in walkers and wheelchairs, lots of them with aides. I don’t like it.”
I don’t like it either, I think. Recently I too have been dismayed by having the inevitability of the aging process impinge daily on my working space. I’ve also been surprised by my feelings. Both my husband – 21 years my senior - and my mother deteriorated greatly in the last years of their lives. Although it greatly pained me to watch that deterioration, it didn’t affect me in the same way. It felt as though the aging process was about them, not me. But six years have gone by. Although I don’t count the years I have left, I am increasingly aware that I am no longer young. But unlike Marjorie’s experience, my mother lived until almost 99 with a positive, rosy disposition until the end. I may not like the daily reminder, but it isn’t as frightening as it is for my patient.
“I suspect it makes you anxious,” I say.
“Yes it does,” she replies. “But that must be true for everyone.”
“Well,” I say, “No one likes the idea of being old and infirm and helpless, but it carries extra meaning for you. It reminds you of the helplessness of both your mother and yourself. After all, you were the child. You were in need of caretaking too. You didn’t have a mother who could take care of you and that left you feeling all the more alone and scared.”
“And you think that’s why I’m afraid of dying?” Marjorie asks skeptically.
“I think that’s one of the reasons you’re afraid of getting old and of dying. But there’s never just one reason for anything. We have to keep exploring and trying to understand.”
