“I had a dream about all these disasters last night,” Jenny says. “It was frightening. There was one disaster after another. I mean I know there have been lots of disasters – floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados – but it was strange for me to be dreaming of them. I don’t know if I was in the disaster or watching the disaster or helping at the disaster. It was weird.”
Jenny‘s a young medical student. I wonder if, at a surface level, she’s anxious about how she will handle her responsibilities as a physician. I remain silent, waiting to see where Jenny’s thoughts will take her.
“My mother called last night. She was complaining about my step-father for a change, about this step-father, just like she complained about all the others. I don’t know why she keeps marrying them, always sure this one will be her most perfect love. I think I’ve even lost count of what number she’s up to. Ugh. I don’t think I ever want to get married. Or not until I’m really, really sure. I guess I see her as a disaster. That’s sad to say about your own mother. I joke with my friends that she’s my negative role model. I want to be everything she’s not and not be anything she is. Sad.”
“Did you feel that way as a child?” I ask.
“Maybe not as a small child, but before I became a teen-ager for sure. Our house was a revolving door. At least she was smart enough not to have any more kids, except that there were always the so-called Dad’s kids who revolved through and then disappeared forever.”
“Was that hard? Forming an attachment to these father figures or siblings and then having them disappear?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe I just learned to do my own thing, be involved with my schoolwork, with my friends. I liked being alone.”
Despite the matter-of-factness in Jenny’s tone, I find myself becoming sad. I wonder about her desire for aloneness as a defense against loss. And I think again about her dream, since disaster almost always involves loss.
“When did you last see your own Dad?”
“Who knows. He vanished a long time ago. Every so often he’ll make an appearance, but I certainly wouldn’t want to count on him.”
“I wonder if it’s possible for you not to feel sad about all these losses, Jenny?”
“I’m too busy.”
To avoid sadness, I think to myself. I ask, “What were the disaster survivors doing in your dream?”
“I was going to say they were doing what disaster survivors always do, dig through their houses looking for stuff, try to find things that are important to them. But I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing people. It was like one of those apocalyptic novels. Maybe there were a few people, I don’t remember, but basically it was empty, barren.”
“Sounds really sad.”
Silence.
“I just had a weird thought. I wonder if it wasn’t me in all those disasters, but you. Like I was the observer, but you were the one who was there. I wonder what that would mean,” she muses. “I could get it if you’re the one who’s trying to help in the disaster. But would that mean I’m the disaster? I don’t feel like a disaster. So am I trying to reduce you, to make you like me, so I don’t feel like so much of a disaster?” Pause. “I guess that’s possible.”
“Are you saying, Jenny, that it feels like a disaster to need people, to need help, to not want to be all alone in the world?”
“It is a disaster to need people. No one is ever there. You can’t count on anyone. Not your mother, not your father …” Her voice trails off.
“Were you going to say, ‘not your therapist’?”
“Yes,” Jenny says looking down. “I mean I know you’ve been there for me, but you’re only my therapist. Eventually this relationship will end. And then what? Then I’ll be alone. Again. Just like always.”
“It’s hard for you to imagine that even when we do end – which we certainly don’t have to do until you’re ready – that you will take me with you, as part of you, just as a part of you will remain with me.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” she says. A moment letter, Jenny is crying. “And I’m not sure I even want to believe it,” she says between sobs. “What would that mean, that I would stay with you when my parents could discard me so easily?”
“It would mean that you are loveable and that it was your parent’s great loss that they weren’t able to cherish you as you needed and deserved to be cherished.”
“I could hardly wait to come today,” Laura says smiling brightly, as she settles into the chair across from me. “Although last time I felt really sad after the session. I always saw myself as having this normal, average family. You know, nice home in the suburbs, Dad commutes to work, Mom substitute teaches, everyone loves everyone else. And I guess that’s still true. But it’s more complicated. Everyone loves everyone else as much as they can, but that may not always be enough for the kids.”
“For the kids?” I ask.
“I guess I mean for me. It’s hard. It’s hard to give up the illusion that everything was just as it should have been. My mother just doesn’t have it, whatever that it is, that maternal instinct, that ability to tune into me. She always preferred being alone with her books and her crafts.” She pauses. “And I didn’t expect to be here. I come into therapy for the first time in my life at 34 to decide whether or not I want to have a child. I never thought I did. And I never questioned why I didn’t, I just didn’t. But with my biological clock getting ready to hit the alarm button and all my friends having babies, I don’t know, I just started to wonder.”
“Do you have feelings about coming into therapy to answer what you thought was a simple question and having me open up Pandora’s box?”
Her eyes twinkle in delight. “That’s why I love coming here. You’re so honest, so straightforward. You always want to know. You want to know me, want to know what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. It’s incredibly refreshing.”
I smile back at her, thinking that she’s the one who’s incredibly refreshing. “I do want to know you, Laura. It’s a privilege to watch your journey of discovery, to watch you find yourself, discover new things about yourself, confront your pain, as well as your joy.”
She begins to cry.
I remain silent.
“I’m sorry… I know. I know. I should never apologize for my tears. It’s just that you’re so different from my mother. And your being so different makes it terribly clear what she couldn’t give me. And it’s sad. No matter what I do I’m not going to make her into you.” She pauses, then adds quietly, “And I can’t make you my mother.”
I smile inwardly. It’s such a pleasure to work with Laura. Despite her having no psychological background, despite her never being in therapy before, she intuitively grasps profound psychological and unconscious processes. Besides, she’s a warm, caring, thoughtful, loving person. We connect well together and I’m confident that I can help her more fully appreciate the fine human being she is.
I say, “So I wonder if what you’re saying, Laura, is that as warm and positive as it feels to be in this room with me, it also mirrors the deprivation and loss you felt in your childhood. Your mother couldn’t be the mother you needed and deserved as a child and although I come closer to the mother you want, I’m not your mother – and I certainly wasn’t the mother of your childhood – which leaves you feeling sad and bereft.
“So what good are you?” Laura asks, attempting to smile through her tears.
“You’re smiling, but I bet you feel angry, angry at me, angry at your mother.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Feelings don’t have to be fair, Laura, they just are.”
She looks at me quizzically. “Putting my sarcasm aside, what good is it for me to feel sad and bereft all over again? And how does that help me decide about having a child?”
“Well, feeling sad and bereft with me enables you to replicate in the present the feelings you had as a child, right at this moment between us. It brings those feelings from the past into the present and allows you to feel sad and angry, sad and angry, and sad and angry and eventually to put them away with a different level of adult acceptance. It allows a mourning for that which never was and never can be.”
“And the child part?”
“I think you already know that having or not having a child is tied to your feelings about how you were mothered and how you feel about mothering another little being. I don’t think we understand it all yet, but I suspect as it becomes clearer to you, you’ll know whether or not you want to have a child.”
She sighs. “I bet if you had been my mother I would have had three kids by now.”
“That’s a really interesting statement, Laura. I think we should look at that more closely next time.”
I’d seen Billy before, during his senior year of high school. His plan was to go to school in central Florida, about three hours from his home, a plan he carried through despite considerable anxiety. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to major in or what career he wanted to pursue, pretty typical feelings for many adolescents. Still, his anxiety seemed excessive, related to a fear of separation and much ambivalence about growing up.
Billy is now seeing me again after moving back home having graduated from college with a degree in English. Not surprisingly he has been unable to find a job.
“I haven’t really looked all that hard,” Billy says sheepishly, his sandy blonde hair hanging over his eyes. “I mean, I know it’s rough out there – the unemployment, especially for kids my age. I don’t have anything special to offer. I’m not sure I could stand the constant rejection.”
“How’s it feel being home?” I ask.
He shrugs. “OK, I guess. It’s like always.”
Billy is the second of six children, all spaced closely together. His parents have a marketing business they run from home. The house is usually pretty chaotic. Not much time put aside specifically for the family or for quality one-on-one time with each other.
“Are all your siblings home?” I ask, trying to gauge the degree of chaos.
“All except Christine. She’s working in Boston. And Melody will be going back to college, but other than that they’re.”
“What led you want to come back to see me?”
“I’m feeling kind of down. I’m like stuck, not doing anything. Mostly I stay in my room and busy myself on the computer. Just passing time.”
“You’re not seeing your friends?”
“Most of them aren’t here anymore. Or they’re working. I haven’t really called around much.”
“You do sound pretty depressed.”
“Yeah, I know. I was thinking I should go back and see the psychiatrist. I hate going back on that stuff, but I feel lousy.”
“Well, calling me and planning to call the psychiatrist is certainly taking action.”
“I guess. But that’s not going solve my problems for the rest of my life.”
“What do you think your problems are, Billy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Is that the problem, or is the problem that you’re not sure – or at least a part of you isn’t sure - that you want to do anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I wonder if part of you feels comfortable living at home, having your parents take care of you.”
“That’s kind of true, but it also doesn’t make sense to me. It’s crazy at home. It’s like a zoo. And it’s like no one even knows I’m there!”
“I think you just said something very important, Billy. Maybe it’s that you want to stay home until someone does know you’re there. Maybe what you’re feeling is that you never got to be seen, to be appreciated and that until you get that – until you get what you never got – you’re going to stay home and wait.”
“But I’d wait forever!”
“That’s true, Billy, you would. You’d never get what you wanted and you certainly couldn’t get what you wanted in your past. There’s no way to turn back the clock.”
“Wow! This is heavy. Do you think that’s it? Do you think that’s why I’m stuck.”
“I think that’s one reason. We humans are pretty complex beings and it’s not like one reason explains everything. And not even knowing that one reason – assuming it’s correct – is going to automatically make you able to do things differently.”
“What will?”
“I think that involves really feeling what it was like for you as a little boy, surrounded by all these siblings, your parents harassed and busy with their own lives, never feeling cherished as a unique you. That means feeling your sadness and your anger, neither of which is exactly easy for you.”
“So you really think it’s about the past?”
“I think it’s about your past and your present and I think they both really impact your future.”
“It sounds hard. But I guess I’m not doing anything else. I might as well work on me.”
“That’s a very courageous response, Billy. I hope you can allow yourself to feel proud of yourself, because I certainly do.”
Billy turns red. Mumbling, “See you next time,” he makes a beeline for the door.
