Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 308

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed," by Lori Gottlieb.

I know how affirming it feels to blame the outside world for my frustrations, to deny ownership of whatever role I might have in the existential play called My Incredibly Important Life. I know what it’s like to bathe in self-righteous outrage, in the certainty that I’m completely right and have been terribly wronged, because that’s exactly how I’ve felt all day.

Therapists, of course, deal with the daily challenges of living just like everyone else. This familiarity, in fact, is at the root of the connection we forge with strangers who trust us with their most delicate stories and secrets. Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our hard-earned expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person. Which is to say, we still come to work each day as ourselves—with our own sets of vulnerabilities, our own longings and insecurities, and our own histories. Of all my credentials as a therapist, my most significant is that I’m a card-carrying member of the human race. 

But revealing this humanity is another matter. One colleague told me that when her doctor called with the news that her pregnancy wasn’t viable, she was standing in a Starbucks, and she burst into tears. A patient happened to see her, canceled her next appointment, and never came back.

It’s not just the words people say or even the visual cues that therapists notice in person—the foot that shakes, the subtle facial twitch, the quivering lower lip, the eyes narrowing in anger. Beyond hearing and seeing, there’s something less tangible but equally important—the energy in the room, the being together. You lose that ineffable dimension when you aren’t sharing the same physical space.

Through his tears, John says that this is exactly what he didn’t want to happen, that he didn’t come here to have a breakdown. But I assure him that he’s not breaking down; he’s breaking open.

Erikson maintained that, in later years, we experience a sense of integrity if we believe we have lived meaningful lives. This sense of integrity gives us a feeling of completeness so that we can better accept our approaching deaths. But if we have unresolved regrets about the past—if we think that we made poor choices or failed to accomplish important goals—we feel depressed and hopeless, which leads us to despair.