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.”     

Appeasement

“I won’t be here next week,” Mona begins. “I’m going fishing with my parents.”

I feel disappointed for Mona. I’ve been seeing her for a little under a year, working on her need to separate from her parents. A 30 year old paralegal, Mona works in the law firm where her mother was once senior partner and lives in a house her extremely successful father bought for her. Although Mona was raised by a series of nannies during her early years - her parents busy building a business and developing a career – they now crave her time and attention.   

“I know,” she continues. “We’ve talked about it and talked about it. No, I don’t really want to go. No, I don’t like to fish. Yes, it’s awful being stuck on a boat with my folks for a week. Yes, I wanted to save my vacation time so I could go to Europe.” Pause. “And I’m going fishing.” 

“Do you have a sense of why you made that decision?”

“The consequences of not going are too great.”

“And those consequences are?”

“My house. My job. Little things like that.”

“Do you think your parents would take away your house or your job if you said you didn’t want to go fishing with them?”

“It’s important to them. If I can make them happy, why not?”

“What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh yes. There is that I suppose.”

“What would make you happy, Mona?”

“Being on a desert island somewhere, all by myself.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“Yes and no I guess. In some ways it would feel like I felt as a kid – alone and adrift – surrounded by my books instead of water. There were times that felt welcoming, peaceful. Other times I felt so, so lonely. All I wanted was Mommy or Daddy to come home and be with me. But even when they were home they weren’t with me. And that was worse.”

“So now Mommy and Daddy have come home to be with you.”

“I suppose.”

Pause.

“You know, I’m not sure that’s true,” Mona says. “I mean, yes, they’re always there. I can’t get rid of them. But I’m the Mommy and the Daddy. I have to take care of them.”

“So you’re still not getting what you need. And you’re certainly not getting what you needed as a child.”

“That’s for sure.”

“But I wonder, Mona, if you keep trying, if you keep trying to get what needed from them. If you keep trying to get them to take care of you as you hadn’t felt taken care of as a child.”

“No doubt. Look what I chose as a profession, a paralegal. Not putting paralegals down or anything, but I know I’m smart, I know I could have been anything I wanted to be – a doctor, a lawyer, CEO of a corporation. But, no, I’m a paralegal and Mommy and Daddy get to take care of me forever.”

“That’s really sad, Mona. You’re saying that you kept yourself from realizing your full potential in your attempt to get what you never got from your parents in the past.”

“It’s worse than that. Because what I get from them now are the same things I was able to get from them as a kid – material things. I never wanted for anything materially. But what I wanted was their time and attention. And, yeah, I suppose I do get that now, but it’s really all about them. I don’t even know why I keep trying.”

“I think you do know why, Mona. You keep trying because inside you there’s a needy dependent little girl who yearns for Mommy and Daddy to be home taking care of you.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“The problem is that you can never make up for that, Mona. The past is past and however much you as that little girl might long for and deserve to have loving, attentive parents, there’s no way to redo that.”

“That’s charming. So what do I do?”

“You - and we - have to work on helping you to mourn that which you never had. It’s hard. It means feeling sad and angry, sad and angry, sad and angry, until you can get to a place of acceptance.”

“Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“No, it’s a long, difficult process.”

“Meanwhile it will have to wait. I’m going fishing.”   

Mourning

“I still can’t believe it,” Marcy says, tears streaming down her face, her hands clenched into fists. “

I can’t believe my big brother is dead. In an instance. He’d just played racket ball that morning. To die just like that. No sign of any heart problems. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m so sorry, Marcy. I know how important your brother was to you, almost like a stand-in father.”

Marcy nods, sobbing, unable to speak.

“And his sudden death must bring up all the feelings you had as a child when your father died so suddenly.”

March nods again, reaches for a tissue and blows her nose. “That’s why I know Dave did everything he could not to repeat our father’s history, not to leave a wife and young kids. He never smoked, didn’t eat red meat, exercised. And he barely made it into his fifties. It’s so unfair,” she says. “Life is so God damn unfair!”

Silence. Marcy looks up at me and says, “You look so sad yourself.”

Marcy has read me correctly. I reverberate with her pain. Although I never had a brother and my father didn’t die young, I’ve had my share of losses. The intensity of Marcy’s pain brings back the feelings of agonizing loss, of emptiness, of disbelief at knowing you will never again see the one you loved. That life is unfair goes without saying. I no longer rail against that indisputable reality. Loss is a necessary part of love and life. And life without love isn’t worth living.  

I respond honestly. “Yes, Marcy. I am. I feel the depth of your loss, your sadness and just as your brother’s death brings up past feelings about your father’s death, it also stimulates feelings about my past losses.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” she says, immediately illustrating the problem of a therapist being self-revealing.

“That’s perfectly okay, Marcy. You don’t have to take care of me. You have more than enough to do right now taking care of your own feelings. And, besides, although your pain now feels overwhelmingly agonizing, I know that you wouldn’t have given up having your brother in your life. And that’s true for me and my losses as well.”

“Oh no! I would never have given up having him in my life. Not for a moment. I literally don’t know what I would have done without him as a kid.” Pause. “But I’m still going to miss him,” she adds plaintively. “I feel like a kid when I say that,” she says between sobs.

“We all carry the child part of us along with our adult self, so I’m sure both the adult you and the child you will miss him. Very much.”

Silence.

“You know what you said about my not having to take care of you?”

“Right. You don’t.”

“I was thinking how different that was than when my father died. I was only six, but I felt that I had to take care of my mother. I was supposed to be the one to make her feel better. And I couldn’t do that. She felt bad for a long, long time. I can feel how I felt as that child. That long, long time felt like forever. And while I tried to take care of her, she wasn’t so good at taking care of me. Good thing my brother was 18, or who knows what would have happened to me. Probably shipped off to some aunt I hardly knew. My brother tried hard. But sometimes my clothes didn’t match or my hair was all messy. I don’t remember the other kids making fun of me. They mostly felt sorry for me, but that didn’t feel so good either.”

“It all sounds terribly painful, Marcy. So hard for you.”

“And now I’m back at it again. Trying to make Mom feel better. But it always seems reasonable. First she loses her husband, now her son. What could be worse than that? But I don’t want in that role again. It’s such a burden.”

“Are you concerned, Marcy, that you will need to take care of me, too?”

“No,” she says hesitantly.

“You don’t sound too sure.”

“Well, you don’t seem depressed and you’re certainly functional.” Pause. “But maybe making you feel sad worries me. Like I’m not supposed to do that.”

“I understand, Marcy. We should continue to look at that. And maybe looking at your feelings of needing to take care of me, will help you work through some of the past issues with your mother and free you from the burden of feeling responsible for her happiness.”       

Family Connections

“I’m kind of in a state of shock,” Sheila begins. “My sister was arrested for shoplifting. A lipstick for heaven sakes! She could have bought a million lipsticks! I don’t get it. And she doesn’t seem to be able to explain it. At least not to me.”

“You’ve never talked much about your sister,” I say to Sheila. “What’s your relationship like?”

Sheila sighs. “Pat’s two years younger than me, 36. I guess we’ve never been close. Not as kids, not now when we live less than a half hour apart. She was always difficult, always getting into trouble, creating some drama in the house. She’s very pretty. My father liked that. I guess I was jealous of her. I was the good girl, the one who always did well in school, the one who obeyed the rules. I got points for that, but her looks made her popular with the “in” girls and always got her dates with the most desirable boys. And then she married Cliff, married into all that wealth. She calmed down after that. I thought she was happy. Who knew?”

“Do you still feel jealous of your sister?”

“I guess. It seemed she was always creating problems, but still got everyone to love her. But I don’t know about this time. My parents are definitely not happy. And I can only imagine how Cliff’s family will react.”

“Does that bring you some satisfaction?”

“I wouldn’t say that to anyone but you, but yes, it does. Except she’ll probably get out of this too. And I really shouldn’t complain. I have a great career, a wonderful husband and a lovely daughter. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Do you feel less than your sister?”

“That’s a good question. It’s like if I think about my adult self and my adult life, I have absolutely no reason to feel less than Pat – except for her money, but that’s really not the issue for me. It’s these feelings from the past that creep in and suddenly I’m the one who gets to stay home on Saturday night, who watches my father look adoringly at my sister and, yes, I feel less than. Silly, right?”

“Not silly at all, Sheila. Our unconscious is timeless and the experiences and feelings we had at five and ten and fifteen, are as much with us, as our present day experiences and feelings.”

“Makes sense.”

“You haven’t talked at all about your mother’s feelings about you or your sister.”

“I guess that’s because I never knew how my mother felt. About anything. She was always efficient and proper and did the things she needed to do, including taking care of us, and I suppose loving us, but there was a shallowness to her feelings. Or maybe it’s that feelings were too messy. She did what she needed to do, her feelings on the shelf.”    

“So in relation to your mother, your sister and you were equal, neither of you getting very much.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I mean we may have been equal, but it’s not that we didn’t get very much.”

“Emotionally?”

“Are you saying you think we were emotionally deprived?”

“You were the good girl, your sister acted out. Maybe you were both trying to get more love and attention.”

Pause.

“I wonder if that’s why I sometimes get depressed out of the blue. It’s like everything is going along fine and suddenly there’s this black cloud.”

“That a great insight, Sheila. What you’re saying is that those childhood feelings we were talking about earlier catch up with you and suddenly you’re a kid again feeling needy and ungiven to and depressed.”

“That’s exactly right!” She pauses. “You know, that also makes me feel more sympathy towards my sister. I like that. It’s a new feeling.” Another pause.  “Do you think she shoplifted because she felt needy and thought the lipstick would make her feel better?”

“You’re saying she was trying to nurture herself with a material object, because she didn’t feel given to emotionally. That’s certainly a possibility. And I imagine there’s some anger thrown in there as well. Probably for both of you.”

“Hmm. I’ve never seen myself as an angry person, but I guess we’ll have to talk about that next time.”

“Okay. We will.”