Scarred Soul of a Grieving Daughter (eBook)

CHAPTER 7

JANUARY 6, 2015

Tuesday already! What happened to Monday? Time seems to fly by faster than the speed of lightning the older I get. It’s January and everybody’s making their New Year’s Resolution. NOT ME. I stopped after my father was killed, thirty years, five months, and six days ago. Damn, I miss him, still. If I made a resolution it would be to find his killer and destroy him; but why? It wouldn’t bring him back.

Oh dear, my car clock reads a couple of minutes after 10am as I pull into my parking space. There she is—my first therapy patient for the day—standing at my office door, arms crossed over her chest, scowl on her face, ready for a fight. As I let her in, I ask for a minute to get myself settled. She grunts an okay. She’s difficult and I don’t expect an ounce of courtesy from her, but I know her gruffness is a defense against rejection—something she experienced a lot of growing up.

She’s a forty-five-year-old never-married woman with a successful IT consulting practice. How she’s able to get clients with her personality has always baffled me. I guess in IT, a bedside manner is not important. As soon as she comes in, before she even sits down, she tells me she doesn’t like to be kept waiting and then goes into a tirade of complaining about her clients, her family, her neighbors, her friends, and, finally, me. I’m not surprised.

“I’ve been coming here for three years and don’t see any improvement.”

She’s made a lot of progress, but I know she has another agenda—to use me as her scapegoat. I take it easy on her—more gentle than usual, as I sense something has happened since her last session that accounts for her hostile attitude towards me today. Therapy 101 works in situations like this as the therapist merely reflects the feelings expressed by the patient and they, in turn, feel heard and understood.

I reply, “Progress is slow and you’re frustrated with coming here every week, doing the homework I assign and feeling like you are getting nowhere. It’s making you very upset. I get it.”

I continue in this vein to ease her into telling me what’s really making her so upset. The rest of the session goes well as she tells me about yet another episode with her tyrannical mother that left her feeling rejected and worthless—not an unusual outcome when she’s with her. I listen and she talks, which is what I want her to do. The session is coming to a close and I remind her again to use the coping skills we’ve worked on in helping her set boundaries with her mother.

As she leaves, she rewards me with, “Alease, I apologize for my rudeness today. I feel better now. See you next week.”

Friends often ask me how I can sit all day and listen to people’s problems. They want to know if I get bored or take their problems home with me. The answer to both questions is yes. Experiencing boredom now and then is not necessarily a reason for me to be overly concerned that something has gone awry in the treatment process. But when I feel this way repeatedly with the same person, it’s a signal for me to check my countertransference to see if there’ something on my end that I need to examine, or it could indicate a need to consult with a colleague for help. When I’m bored a lot with my work, it usually means I need to take a break. I will admit, it’s hard for me to take time off. I feel guilty, like I’m abandoning my patients. I have to monitor this tendency of mine regularly.

Yes, sometimes I take my patients’ problems home with me. This usually happens when a sudden life event upends a patient’s life. It can also happen when I’m deeply saddened by a patient’s despair. If they are not suicidal and can carry on the basic functions of their daily life, I have to let the process unfold and hold my feelings in abeyance until we reach a resolution. This process is tricky and requires a lot of discipline. I want to hug them, like a parent, and tell them that everything will be okay. Usually, though, there’s no therapeutic benefit in doing this.

At the same time, I have violated this rule, physically comforting a patient during a very emotional session because I felt they needed it. The art of therapy is very complex. During a typical therapy session, the therapist is patient-focused, but also mentally sifting through a myriad of interventions and interpretations that they feel might be helpful in the moment or later. It’s hard work, but it gets easier with experience and supervision. The joy of our work as therapists is the deep satisfaction we derive in knowing that we have made a major difference in a person’s life.

My 11o’clock comes in more anxious than I’ve seen her in a while. She’s getting married in a couple of months and wants to work on her excessive worry about whether she’s making the right decision. I assure her she is and tell her it’s her devilish anxiety that’s messing with her mind. She laughs and nods in agreement. We review the coping skills she’s learned to handle this, and she leaves feeling better. Easy-Peasy.

My next two aren’t so simple. One is bipolar and bordering on a manic episode but in denial. I check to see if she’s taking her medication, and she says she is, which I don’t believe. I arrange to see her again this week and urge her to see her psychiatrist ASAP. She says she will, but I doubt this too. I have my work cut out with this case.

The next one, my 1o’clock, is a narcissist and keeps me entertained with his grandiosity. My attempts to explore deeper intrapsychic conflicts fall on deaf ears as he immediately criticizes me for overanalyzing him. Duh, that’s my job, buddy.

He leaves his session as carefree as he entered, condescendingly patting me on my back and cavalierly saying, “See you next week, Alease. Have a good one.”

Oh, well, I sigh to myself.

I have an hour before I see my new patient, Mr. Leon Taylor. I rush through the lunch I brought from home, write my notes, check to see if I have any text messages or email. Thankfully, I don’t. I’m jittery today. Can’t figure out why. Maybe I’m just tired. Need to talk to Grant about a weekend mini vacation. I know he’ll be up for it, but I’ll have to decide where to go, make reservations AND remind him over and over where we’re going and when. Damn, husbands get off so easily.

As 2 o’clock approaches, I realize that Mr. Taylor didn’t email me his intake forms; so he’ll have to complete them in the waiting room before I see him. He was referred by Dr. Underwood, a psychiatrist whose office is right here in my building, two floors up on the fifth floor. I’ve never met him, but his patients speak highly of him and I’m pleased to get his referrals. Since the first one, he’s sent a steady flow of people my way.

Mr. Taylor is on time and seems nervous. His handshake is strong but forced as if he’s pretending at being friendly. He’s well dressed, almost too put together for a therapy appointment. He wears a dark suit, crisp white shirt, and tastefully matching tie. His shoes are leather and polished to a shine that speaks of a man who’s accustom to dressing well. Next to him I must look the opposite in my black slacks, loafers and a loose fitting sweater I probably bought on-line.

An attractive Black man with medium brown complexion, he looks to be about five-feet-ten, around 160 pounds with close cropped dark brown hair that appears to be balding. He’s clean shaven, no mustache. His eyes are dark brown but show no emotion. He looks frail and depressed. Do I sense a deep despair? Or is this handsome, polite gentleman concealing something sinister?

I put these thoughts aside and return to a neutral frame of mind as I give him the paperwork to sign: demographics, confidentiality, duty to warn, payment/cancellation policy, etc. while I make a copy of his insurance card. He finishes the paperwork so quickly that I’m sure he didn’t bother to read it. I ask if he has any questions. He says he doesn’t. As I quickly look over his demographics, I see he’s fifty-five- years-old and lives in Clinton, Maryland, which is quite a distance from my office in DC. Odd that he would travel so far to see me. I ask if he has any questions. He says he doesn’t.

I escort him into my office and he looks confused about where to sit. I point to the sofa and he sits, crosses his legs, and tries to look calm.

Without prompting, he blurts out, “I started to cancel. I’m not sure I can go through with this. I don’t like talking, but Dr. Underwood said I would like you. He’s cool; wish I could see him, but he said he doesn’t do therapy, just medication. Things never go right for me. I never get what I want--

I interrupt him and respond to his apprehension and ambivalence, “You’re not alone in feeling this way. Many people come to therapy not sure if they’ve made the right decision. Let’s proceed with the session and see where we are at the end.”

“Ok. That’s fair enough.”

I ask, “Can I call you by your first name?”

He nods and quickly adds, “My last name, as you know, is Taylor, and growing up I was called LT. I put a stop to that nonsense when I turned eighteen. I started correcting people when they shortened my name. People are always assuming one thing or another about people—never asking.”

I thank him for putting this right out in the open before we got started, while saying to myself, “Whew, that was a handful. He’s letting me know who’s in charge here.”

“Please call me...