Then there’s the fact that losses tend to be multilayered. There’s the actual loss (in my case, of Boyfriend), and the underlying loss (what it represents). That’s why for many people the pain of a divorce is only partially about the loss of the other person; often it’s just as much about what the change represents—failure, rejection, betrayal, the unknown, and a different life story than the one they’d expected. If the divorce happens at midlife, the loss might involve coping with the limitations of knowing someone and being known again with the same degree of intimacy. I remember reading a divorced woman’s experience of getting to know a new lover after her decades-long marriage ended: “I will never lock eyes in the delivery room with David,” she wrote. “I’ve never met his mother.”
And that’s also why Wendell’s question is so important. In asking me to remember what it’s like to sit with people who are grieving, he’s showing me what he can do for me right now. He can’t fix my broken relationship. He can’t change the facts. But he can help because he knows this: We all have a deep yearning to understand ourselves and be understood. When I see couples in therapy, often one or the other will complain, not “You don’t love me” but “You don’t understand me.” (One woman said to her husband, “You know what three words are even more romantic to me than ‘I love you’?” “You look beautiful?” he tried. “No,” his wife said. “I understand you.”)
My tears start again, and I’m thinking about what it might be like for Wendell to sit here with me. Everything we therapists do or say or feel as we sit with our patients is mediated by our histories; everything I’ve experienced will influence how I am in any given session at any given hour. The text I just received, the conversation I had with a friend, the interaction I had with customer service while trying to resolve a mistake on my bill, the weather, how much sleep I’ve gotten, what I dreamed of before my first session of the day, a memory inspired by a patient’s story, will all influence my behavior with my patient. Who I was before Boyfriend is different from who I am now. Who I was when my son was an infant is different from who I am in sessions now, including in this one with Wendell. And he is different in this session with me because of whatever has happened in his life up to this point. Maybe my tears are bringing up whatever grief he’s experienced and it’s painful for him to sit through this too. He’s as mysterious to me as I am to him, and yet here we are, joining forces to unravel the story of how I ended up here.
It’s Wendell’s job to help me edit my story. All therapists do this: What material is extraneous? Are the supporting characters important or a distraction? Is the story advancing or is the protagonist going in circles? Do the plot points reveal a theme?
The techniques we use are a bit like the type of brain surgery in which the patient remains awake throughout the procedure; as the surgeons operate, they keep checking in with the patient: Can you feel this? Can you say these words? Can you repeat this sentence? They’re constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back off so as not to damage it. Therapists delve into a mind rather than a brain, and we can see from the subtlest gesture or expression if we’ve hit a nerve. But unlike neurosurgeons, we gravitate toward the sensitive area, pressing delicately on it, even if it makes the patient feel uncomfortable.
That’s how we get to the deeper meaning of the story, and often at the core is some form of grief. But a lot of plot stands in between.
A patient named Samantha came to therapy in her twenties to understand the story of her beloved father’s death. She’d been told as a child that he had died in a boating accident, but as an adult, she began to suspect that he had killed himself. Suicide often leaves the survivors with an unsolved mystery: Why? What could have been done to prevent this?
Meanwhile, Samantha was always looking for problems in her relationships, searching for issues that would inevitably provide her with a reason to leave. In not wanting her boyfriends to be the enigma that her father was, she’d unwittingly re-create a story of abandonment—only in this version, she was the one doing the abandoning. She had control, but ended up alone. In therapy, she learned that the mystery she was trying to solve was larger than whether or not her father committed suicide. It was also the mystery of who her father was when he was alive—and who she became as a result of that.
People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don’t know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?
I cry and cry, wondering how it’s possible that I can cry so long. I wonder if I’ve become massively dehydrated. And still more tears appear. Before I know it, Wendell is patting his legs to indicate that our session is over. I take a breath and notice that I feel strangely calm now. Sobbing freely in Wendell’s office was like being wrapped in a blanket, warm and safe and separate from everything happening out there. I think about the Jack Kornfield quote again, the part about self-acceptance, but still I start to judge: Did I just pay somebody to watch me cry for forty-five minutes straight?
Yes and no.
Wendell and I had a conversation, even if no words were exchanged. He watched me grieve, and he didn’t try to make things more comfortable by interrupting or analyzing the issue. He let me tell my story in whatever way I needed to today.
As I dry my tears and stand to leave, I think about how whenever Wendell has asked about other aspects of my life—what else was happening while Boyfriend and I were dating, what my life was like before I met Boyfriend—I’ve given a pat response (family, work, friends; nothing to see here, folks!), always returning the topic to Boyfriend. But now, tossing my tissues in the trash can, I realize that what I’ve told Wendell isn’t really complete.
I haven’t lied, exactly. But I haven’t told the whole story either.
Let’s just say that I left out some details.
Part Two
Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.
—Gretel Ehrlich
18
Fridays at Four
We’re in my colleague Maxine’s office—skirted chairs, distressed wood, vintage fabrics, and soft shades of cream. It’s my turn to present a case in today’s consultation group, and I want to talk about a patient I can’t seem to help.
Is it her? Is it me? That’s what I’m here to find out.
Becca is thirty years old, and she came to me a year ago because of difficulty with her social life. She did well at her work but felt hurt that her peers excluded her, never inviting her to join them for lunch or drinks. Meanwhile, she’d just dated a string of men who seemed excited at first but broke it off after two months.
Was it her? Was it them? That’s what she’d come to therapy to find out.
This isn’t the first time I’ve brought up Becca on a Friday at four, when our weekly group meets. Though not required, consultation groups are a fixture of many therapists’ lives. Working alone, we don’t have the benefit of input from others, whether that’s praise for a job well done or feedback on how to do better. Here we examine not just our patients but ourselves in relation to our patients.