advice

October 28, 2015

When Life is Overwhelming and Therapists Don’t Get It

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If you didn’t believe life was difficult — well, you probably would have given up on this blog long ago. Some of us imitate Sisyphus, the mythical king sentenced to push a bolder up a hill for eternity. Each time he reached high enough, the rock rolled down and he started over.

A few therapists sell you a potential future far beyond anything realistic. They are usually young, naïve despite their years, or genetically disposed to walk on the sunny side of the street. A handful are just lucky. The imagined life on offer is like being next door to a barbecue: you watch the smoke and smell the meat cooking. Your portion, however, will be a plate containing the sizzle without the steak.

Bon appétit.

Other counselors attempt to persuade themselves of reasons to be optimistic. Their effort to salve your wounds also treats their own. Whether self-aware or not, they make noise in the office to mask the bone crunching going on just outside, the better not to hear the screams.

This month I came upon two bloggers who endure the piercing splinters from those broken bones. I did not say “have endured.” Their pain is still alive.

They don’t so much triumph over the travail as persist despite it. Each offers realism over fairy tales, honesty over imagination, and survival over happy endings. This is the brutal truth from their perspective.

Read their posts and weep, but remember, they are still around to speak to you, write for you, and live for themselves and those about whom they care. Each one offers a meaningful life, not a walk in the park. One is a Jack of many trades, the other a Jill of a teacher.

Both are enraged at those who maintain that “everything happens for a reason.” Each finds reasons — not a reason — to persevere despite the things they carry. They do not offer you all the details of what caused the suffering, preferring you to focus on the emotional consequences.

Consolation in life requires acknowledgement of the extent of the injury, not platitudinous minimization. Invalidation of your misfortune by a friend or counselor is the therapeutic equivalent of passing gas. Such people would tell you the end of Hamlet, with bodies littered everywhere, is just a part of the “divine plan.”

We benefit by the presence of a faithful soul who often can do no more than stand by. A good therapist offers this service, not the disrespect of telling you that Prince (or Princess) Charming is in the parking lot waiting for you.

The male blogger is an “adversity and life strategist:” Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason/

The lady is an English teacher: The Lottery/

Witness the pain of these writers. In so doing you will be honoring your own.

—

The photo is called Melancholy by Andrew Mason (London, UK). It is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 11, 2015

When a Therapist Continues to Mean too Much

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Sometimes your patient cannot get enough of you. He might love you or want friendship. He could wish for continuing advice beyond therapy’s end; or desire you as a stand-in parent available for the long haul. Often he doesn’t understand his motivation. The “draw” of the doctor is felt, but not easily articulated. Perhaps the longing for closeness and security are enough to explain it.*

The preoccupation might take the form of attempting to get a glimpse of him: a pattern of observation from a distance, undetected — as he enters his office, for example.  Checking him out on the internet is another possibility. Perhaps not even that. The simple act of spending more time thinking about your ex-therapist post-counseling than you logged in face-to-face is what I’m talking about.

Is the counselor injured by cyberspace scrutiny or residence in the patient’s head? No. How am I harmed if someone reads a journal article I wrote, watches a speech I gave, views a blog post, or wonders about me? I don’t go sleepless with any fear of privacy invasion. I tremble not because of a potential encounter we might have at Starbucks.

Freud expected his couch-candidates to develop strong feelings about him. He thought these emotions were unconsciously transferred to him from people like mom or dad and therefore called the phenomenon “transference.” By working through the intense attachment to him, Dr. Freud believed the patient would overcome his unresolved early-life injuries. Once accomplished, the therapist again became the shrink, not a stand-in for anyone else. Freud understood it was not he who lived in the mind of his analysand, but an idealized (or diminished) version of himself.

All therapists realize that patients often benefit from closeness. Each of us needs to believe we matter. When such knowledge has been absent, treatment can foster an improved sense of value. The doc’s caring, intelligence, close attention, and understanding help repair earlier relationship injuries. Not surprisingly, a lengthy course of psychotherapy commonly produces at least a bit of attachment to the shrink.

On the other hand, there is a problem if the patient experiences continuing, daily, affect-laden preoccupation with the doc and his life. I’m ruling out the occasional cyber search most of us do. Old friends, lovers, and movie stars are fair game. An impromptu internet investigation is an innocent way to pass a few minutes.

Past counselors can so fill the space in the client’s head as to squeeze out his effort to find satisfying human contact in the non-virtual world. The internet realm is safer and the therapist is “known,” perhaps part of the reason he is chosen over the unreliable community of touchable humanity.

The preoccupation can be excruciating. Yet the sufferer’s relationship history is worse. Thus, the limitations of an out-of-reach therapist are benign in comparison.

It is useful to imagine a shrink as akin to a transitional object for some of his clients. Think of how an inanimate security blanket helps a child soothe himself when his caretaker is absent. Indeed, a counselor might even give a worried adult patient a stuffed animal to help him manage the doctor’s anticipated vacation.

To continue the analogy, the therapist tries to comfort the client and enable his development of emotional self-care skills. The patient will ideally attempt relationships after therapy, but generate these on his own with less sense of either fear or desperate neediness. The goal of psychotherapy is self-sufficiency and “wholeness” for patients, even in those life moments where satisfying intimacy might be absent.

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The problem with an unending preoccupation with the memory of the therapist is, to an extent, not different from the continuing “presence” of a deceased or estranged parent, friend, or lover. Even to the degree that these people played an important role in his life, one must “get over” them and their absence. A mourning process is required, not perpetual attention to a shadow version of them in public space — the footprints they left (or continue to leave) in the real world.

Counselors and patients, from the first day of treatment, need to understand the contact between them will be temporary, however life changing. Many clients, nonetheless, cannot conceive of the extent to which their attachment may intensify. Even were they told in a detailed and emphatic fashion, they would be unconvinced.

Treatment is intended to be a stepping stone to “living,” not a substitute for it. Patients are only fully alive when they’ve taken the hard and courageous learning they wrested from the consulting room on the road. The highway of existence is pothole filled. The journey risks disaster, but offers the possibility of achievement, self-worth, and intimacy not available if you are too focused on a one-sided, unreciprocated experience of watching and longing for what cannot be; and therefore not making the best use of your human qualities in the limited time we have on the planet.

In some sense, all relationships — not just the doctor/patient variety — are temporary. We grow apart, friends move away, death intervenes, and our heart breaks over the losses. This is in our nature, a portion of the human saga. Persistent attachment to a therapist is not the patient’s “fault.” Unfortunately, it can take the form of a ball and chain, restricting his growth. Perhaps a better metaphor is to say the client is haunted by the vaporous remains of a too significant “other.”

Unless he turns to a different counselor, the patient must shed the ghost of his therapist by himself. A warm spot inside for someone who meant much is one thing. An internal cauldron is quite another. You will find no exorcist to make the bubbles disappear.

The first step in solving the problem is to recognize it. Then remember why you sought help in the first place. Surely, it was for reasons other than becoming closer to a professional, reasons you can honor by freeing yourself from the abiding distraction his recollection produces. Next, pursue new activities and connections while simultaneously leaving the therapist’s shadow to mind itself. Grieving is in the mix throughout.

As much heartache as may be involved, the door leading to fresh possibilities requires this challenging set of steps.

But then, you’ve faced obstacles before. Indeed, I’ll bet nothing about your recovery has been easy.

—

The top image is called Female Spirit on a Street by Bonnybbx. The photo that follows is called Fog-Pocalypse by Zach Dischner. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

*This post was prompted by reading Staying Connected to My Therapist and Trying to be Kind to Myself.

September 20, 2015

The Therapist’s Office as a Refuge

Therapy sessions have changed. Or perhaps I should say, they are the same as always, but the world isn’t. The consulting room remains a quiet place for quiet conversation. Everywhere else is noisier and more crowded, with fewer spaces of refuge and much distraction. Almost nowhere are you (and you alone) the sole concern of someone who is not your small child.

You are worse for this, but something can be done. More on taking action later.

First, let’s look back before the advent of cell phones. I’m speaking of the days prior to elevator music (unless you brought a violinist with you), TV, and radio. In other words, less than one hundred years ago.

If you don’t live a rural life or reside away from flight paths and railroads, you probably don’t know what has been lost.

Where else, other than in therapy, do you obtain the undistracted concentration of another? Not over dinner if the TV is on or music is playing. Not if your phone is on. Not if you or your partner are reading or looking out the window.

I recall a single-cell cartoon showing a middle-aged couple over coffee. He is reading the newspaper and his partner is talking.

“I’m sorry dear, I wasn’t paying attention. Can you repeat everything you’ve said since we married?”

The draw of the personal phone is powerful. According to a 2013 survey, “At least 9 percent (of those surveyed) admitted to grabbing the phone while having sexual relations. Among those 18 to 34 years-old, the number climbs to 20 percent.”

This finding gives new meaning to the word “threesome” and the phrase ménage à trois.

Some patients might benefit from a public address announcement requesting them to turn off electronic devices. Would they want their surgeon to take calls while operating on their brain? For much of my career I made sure I couldn’t be summoned instantaneously. Patients understood I checked messages a few times a day. The ER was available if they needed urgent care. Nobody died.

Many of us complain of lacking intimacy, but the little bugger in our pocket mocks those complaints. Should you wish someone’s full attention, start by giving it.

Why must the TV be on during dinner, creating a hurdle to conversation? How many TVs do you own? The husband of a friend installed a television in every room of their home, including the bathrooms. He was neither a patient nor a patient man, by the way. I recall a famous therapist who carried two cell phones. I once saw him holding conversations on both simultaneously.

I’d guess, for some of you at least, the unconscious draw of counseling is not only your therapist’s help, but that the time is yours, yours alone, without disturbance: a refuge.

I realize a few of you need noise — the hum of things — to distract you: the radio or TV chatter makes you feel secure and reduces your loneliness.

However, if you don’t fear the stillness, and want greater relationship intensity and intimacy, here is some guidance: an antidote for the monstrous, electronically hectored life you live.

First, acknowledge that your life is partly of your making.

Then, take control. Make the days what you wish them to be, don’t simply endure them.

You need not tolerate people who invite their phone to dinner with you. You can say, “I thought this was for the two of us alone,” nodding in the direction of the inanimate third-party on the table. Smile sweetly when you do.

Sell or junk all but one or two TVs. Exclude electronics from dinner at home.

The family will not cheer this: “Mom! Dad! This is the 21st century! Everyone else does this. Why are you punishing me?”

Turn off the music. Sound proof your room. Get ear plugs. Go to quiet restaurants. Spend time in the country. Alert companions that you are no longer a slave to your phone, the Twitter account, and the latest update on their visit to the w/c.

If you struggle to do these things, perhaps you need to talk with a therapist about self-assertion.

Whose life is it? Who’s the boss, applesauce?

Have a nice day!

No. Make a nice day.

Rant over.

August 30, 2015

Passive or Active? Choosing Your Life

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Simple words are not so simple. Rather, we forget their meaning. We forget how much they should provoke a reevaluation of our lives. Consider the words “take” and “make.” I’ll try to “make” something of their importance in describing the lives we choose.

Here is a common sentence: “I must make a decision.” It sounds more passive than it is. I have heard the same phrase from non-native English-speakers, slightly altered: “I must take a decision.” As in grab or capture. Even in “making” a decision, at least in its most active form, we “build” or “construct.”

Take stock. Take over. Take responsibility. Make a choice. Make something of yourself.

Do you see where I’m taking you? What kind of life do you want? One you take or one left over because you did not capture a place in line?

We all know not choosing is a choice. If you don’t make a decision someone else will; or, perhaps the opportunity to intervene on your own behalf will pass. Many times an active decision is right even when wrong. You grab hold of the wheel of your life and try to steer. Value resides in ownership of yourself: self possession.

Many of the newer therapeutic models are not as contemplative, reflective, and retrospective as Freudian therapy, but add conceptual, emotional, and behavioral change — action — in the present. True, Freud warned about making personal decisions early in the treatment process, when still burdened by unresolved issues. There is recklessness in acting without thought, but finally one must roll the dice of life or stay on the sidelines, part of the audience. Indeed, one persuasive therapy model goes by the name of ACT (the word, not the initials): Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT leads you to a point of decision about what is important to you, commitment to those revealed values, and an eventual behavioral enactment of your commitment.

You have doubtless noticed women whose companions are men of action, whether thespians, builders, or “makers and shakers.” Indeed, a man pursuing a woman is described as “being on the make.” Some of those “gentlemen” are less than uniformly admirable, but their grasp of initiative is. Many other males (and females) lead lives of “quiet desperation.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. You needn’t be a leader to take charge of your life. Each of us has problems. Our inner life can be like a room filled with shelves of challenges we avoid. One must clear the shelves. We either sweep them clean or avert our eyes and lock the room wherein they reside. We then avoid any part of life reminding us of the courage we lack. Our failure might even be rationalized as good judgment — as an avoidance of danger.

How many people can’t eat out alone, try to make a new friend, or phone a stranger (choosing email instead)? How many of us can’t speak in a group or attend a class out of fear? How many adults can’t say no, ask for things, or look someone in the eye while uttering a necessary truth? If you are 16 and you don’t tackle such challenges, OK. At 56, if you still can’t, what then?

A graduating high school senior tells a younger, awe-struck young man why she couldn’t be with him:

“Charlie, I told you not to think of me that way nine months ago because of what I’m saying now. Not because of Craig (her then boyfriend). Not because I didn’t think you were great. It’s just that I didn’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don’t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don’t like, I’ll tell them.”*

Life in a fetal position is not a life in full. Trying always to please others is a life given away to people who won’t value you because you set your price tag too low. Such an existence is the opposite of “being a man,” a phrase that applies to any mature, confident adult, regardless of gender. Some of us persuade ourselves that the things we don’t do (because we don’t try) aren’t important. A kind of self-delusion. Others live in regret, consumed by “what might have been,” shadowed by the effort they did not “make.”

Regret is the only six-letter word equivalent of a four-letter swear. Unless you do an irreparable injury to another, perpetual regret is like a judge you have assigned the job of looking down on you, pointing an accusing finger eternally.

We all must stretch ourselves to our limit, especially in the first half of life, and learn to hold our head high always. Ironically, in the act of lengthening the spine by standing upright we feel better, and tend to overcome whatever sense of shame lives inside. Few of us, after all, wish to appear spineless.

Passivity isn’t the opposite of activity as much as it is the adversary of “living.”

Make the best of your life. You will die whether you do or not, so you might as well die trying.

—

*Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. New York: Pocket Books, 1999: 201.

The painting of The Archangel Michael Tramples Satan by Guido Reni is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

August 9, 2015

On being Insecure and Alone

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We are small creatures trying to be large. Or perhaps we are incomplete beings trying to be whole. Do those words sum up the human condition? How do we deal with our essential loneliness and insecurity? I’ll get to that.

Man begins incomplete, both in the womb and out. Your newborn is unable to tell the difference between himself and you. The trouble starts when he figures out that he can’t live without you. No wonder he cries.

Insecurity is in the nature of life. Indeed, if I met an entirely secure person I’d ponder how he managed to miss so much about the “simple difficulty” of living. A contradiction in terms, I know.

From the infant’s first tear begins a lifetime journey to complete himself, to escape solitary confinement. Most of us don’t want to be alone — a vulnerable and separate existence. The punishments in the Bible begin with being “cast out.” First, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Then Cain was exiled for the murder of his brother. “You are on your own” is not a friendly statement. In truth, we are all on our own, in our own skin, unique in the vista we observe from the elevated wrapper we call the head.

What to do? Let’s start with what some of us do most of the time and all of us do some of the time. We attempt to incorporate other people into our lives. Intercourse achieves this physically. No wonder sex is bliss.

Next best is to embrace — get physically close, but still outside. Neither an embrace nor copulation last long. The problem of separateness resists a resolution.

Social — not physical — affiliation is a pleasing substitute. Where intimate friendships are absent, group connections take their place. Team membership has its satisfactions and avoids the “left out” experience of children’s games. The “we’re number one” sports fans gravitate to a similar, but vicarious category of connection and solace.

We put up with a lot to be with our fellow humans, part of a group. We try to “play nice,” even when not treated well. It’s better to be in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in, as the crude saying goes.

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In the absence of human contact, some ingest food. Sustenance substitutes for love, lacking only the touch of another. Too much nourishment and the grub “joins” with you — becomes a larger and larger part of your body. The meal is now a permanent addition inside.

Humans make an effort at self-display, all the better to draw others to them. We want to be like magnets so that passers-by will “stick.” Clothes, hair style, makeup, and hair pieces are “attractive,” designed to “pull” the stranger close and prevent a solitary state. Sometimes external charm leads to the physical joining discussed earlier.

The “selfie-stick” generation takes this tack a step further. Not only do their public picture portraits cry out for crowds of onlookers, they offer the photographer, like Narcissus, a fascination and merger with his own creation: the glorified image of himself. Who needs intimacy when you can fall in love with yourself?

The computerized world provides an incomplete union with others, lacking the satisfaction of flesh. The fusion we seek is not electronic. You cannot crawl into the iPhone or laptop. A community of Facebook “friends” or a large blog following has its pleasures. Recognize, though, what social media alone can never be.

Some people acquire external objects, creating a kind of imagined fusion with a thing instead of a person. In effect, the buyer takes the material creation from the outside of himself to change his emotions inside. Goods define some people and become a point of pride, something “incorporated” within the identity.

Status and wealth, similarly, can be internalized to diminish a sense of naked, solo vulnerability. Those of a more academic bent might choose to pour knowledge into the brain, hoping for the same result.

Religion also reduces life’s insecurity — its essential isolation. Here the goal is to lose oneself in a complete identification and contemplation of God, at least in a hoped-for, heavenly afterlife.

In this world, however, none of the solutions I’ve discussed does the job fully. Sex acts are temporary, embraces are momentary, and the emotional benefits of eating and drinking are short-lived. Clothes and other objects make you feel complete for 10 minutes or 10 days. Knowledge acquisition is a treadmill marathon you can never finish. High status only lasts as long as the next TV season or term of office. To frustrate us even more, there are all those celebrities — owners of dazzle and accomplishment — we compare ourselves to. Their presence on earth is a kill-joy. We cannot merge with them. Instead we fantasize about them, creating an amalgamation in our dreams.

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All this points to some common, but flawed notions of how to complete ourselves and have a more satisfying life:

  • The pursuit of stardom is a fool’s errand. No, not because you are unlikely to reach the heavens.  Rather, aiming for glory for its own sake ignores the work it will take. “Look at me!” is the selfie-stick generation’s solution to an existential crisis: like a drowning man who ignores a lifeboat, he instead reaches for a plastic comb floating on the water.
  • All the material “stuff” ballyhooed constantly by advertising will only make you whole temporarily. We are leaky vessels. Commodities plug the holes too briefly.
  • Looking for the true, perfect love — your soul mate — can be sensational if you find her, but still leaves you in your own skin, dealing with your own demons. Relationships are wonderful, but don’t cure you of the human condition. Love is not medication. Not so sure? Go to the pharmacist and request “One soul mate, please. A 30-day supply.”
  • Moving to California is the “I need a change” solution. Yes, we do need to change, but traveling across the country “looking for yourself” reveals only one thing: you are the same guy who began the trip.
  • The more time you spend in front of an electronically lit screen (computer, phone, TV, or movie) the less time you have for satisfying intimacy with someone nearby. Yes, I’m aware of looking at such a screen right now. Introverts do need more time alone!

So, what is the answer? Well, if I had a perfect one, I’d be famous. That said, I do have ideas:

  • Recognize that real people are better (even if more dangerous) than virtual friends. Even so, they are not enough. You still need a life of purposeful action.
  • Try to get outside of yourself. Things can’t be incorporated inside you and humans tend to resist ties that bind too much.
  • You can’t bring the world within, so meet the globe halfway. Break out of the prison — the solitary confinement — of a repetitive, obsessive look in the mirror.
  • Avoidance is a dead end. No satisfied or satisfying people live there. A life of adventure won’t invade your home and drag you out.
  • Find captivating employment, generous and interesting people, and stimulating things to learn. Not to build your image and draw others to you, but because they are worthwhile in themselves.
  • Recognize that you can’t have everything in life, but life can be delightful if you are lucky and wise. Stop multi-tasking and focus on the small number of things you believe have real value. Get off the treadmill of routine.
  • Don’t run yourself ragged. Don’t be a human doing, always in a frenzy. You are a human being.
  • The path to a portion of happiness might include meditation, intensely noticing the everyday world around you, and being sufficiently active to lose yourself in it. Think less and live more in the joyful instant. A baseball player trying to catch a long drive is not wondering about his acne.
  • Accept the planet for what it is, which is a pretty messy place, but the only one we’ve got. Change the world if you have the energy and talent. If you don’t, accept what can’t be altered, at least by you.
  • Know yourself. Everyone thinks he knows himself, but few approximate full self-knowledge. Figure out what you can do: those activities you might excel at with some practice, guidance, and effort. And recognize the tasks you should never even try. If you are a 5′ 4” male, don’t pin your hopes on playing professional basketball. If you are introverted, don’t become a political candidate. Value yourself for the best in you and make better what is amenable to alteration.
  • Learning, however essential, will not always be fun and will often be painful. Sorry, I didn’t make the rule.
  • Think for yourself. Received wisdom is frequently a worthless commodity. Live by a moral code you take a hand in fashioning, not something handed to you. This will require you to think and study. Most people will not or cannot make the effort, they just assume they are good.
  • We create history, but mustn’t ignore the history we’ve already lived. Some amount of knowing where you’ve been is required, lest you revisit pitfalls and repeat mistakes.
  • Having a personal mantra of “life is unfair to me” will not get you far. Better to adopt this paraphrase of the motto of the fine blogger, What It Takes To Be Me: life wasn’t meant to be easy; it was meant to be worth it. It will only be thus if you make it so despite the obstacles.
  • Even if you accomplish all this, your life still won’t be perfect. You will continue to be in your own skin. Insecurity won’t have completely vanished. Yeah, a bummer. Get over it.
  • Once you figure out who you are, wipe the blackboard clean. As my friend, Phil, likes to say, “I try to reinvent myself every day.”

Phil, by the way, is a smart guy. Listen to him.

—

The top photo is called Meall Ghaordaidh Behind Bars, sourced from Richard Webb’s transfer to Wikimedia Commons. The University of Chicago t-shirt comes from http://www.zazzle.com/

July 25, 2015

Why We Choose to Look the Way We Do

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We are perceived, objects beheld, lab specimens under a microscope. A human being is akin to a car in a showroom window. While you can drive yourself batty worrying about the opinions of those who are watching you, ignoring them completely is usually a recipe for loneliness. Equally, your own evaluations have consequences for those you observe. Sometimes you can tell a whole book by its cover, sometimes a few pages, and every so often you mistake a Donald Duck comic strip for Anna Karenina. 

When a person enters our field of vision we receive a rush of incoming data: clothing, jewelry, hair style, hair color, and portable objects (phones, purses, brief cases). We might notice what is in the mouth (gum, food, tobacco), head coverings, and exposure of skin. Aids to movement (walking sticks, bikes, wheel chairs) and facial hair are hard to miss.

Even what people are looking at is sometimes obvious. Gait, posture, and facial expressions are clear. Passersby text and talk. The physique itself is part of the visual array. Let’s not neglect eye contact, body punctures, tattoos, glasses, headphones, and backpacks.

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Individually or in combination, intentionally or not, all these create an impression. What conclusions might others draw from what they see of us? What might we surmise from what we notice of them?

  • His tribe. In other words, group affiliations such as nationality, school, sports team, and religion.
  • Whether he is a friend or a foe. 
  • Attitudes toward sexual allure and modesty. Advertising sexual availability is as simple as a bare ring finger or as obvious as a leer.
  • The transmission of fear from the terrifying one being inspected to the watcher.
  • Signs of wealth or power.
  • An attempted disguise (for example, makeup, wearing a beard to cover a weak chin or a combover).
  • Physical fitness. Attitudes toward food and diet are inferred from this. Conclusions about self-control or its absence might also occur.
  • Information about values, as reflected by religious symbols or clothing identified with a particular culture. For example, a green wrist bracelet with the words “Save Darfur” declares support of a cause. The surveyor may further conclude something about the wearer’s politics.
  • Adherence to social convention is demonstrated by unremarkable, mainstream attire. Conversely, unconventional appearance rejects those same standards.
  • The importance of clothing itself is implied if the person dresses in finery.
  • A wish for attention or for anonymity, the latter by blending into the crowd. Equally, an attempt to generate attention by those who have become “invisible” due to advancing age: a war with time fought in retreat. Past a certain age, it is harder to draw the eye of the audience. Instead, we fade into it.

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  • Encouragement of social contact from others or simple openness to such contact. (As easy to convey as a smile, a wink, or a frown).
  • A uniform (literal in the case of soldiers or those required to wear work attire; figurative, in the case of a business suit or the tuxedos sported by symphony conductors).
  • Subtle intimidation. The “power” tie of a litigator, perhaps. Or outfits chosen to minimize intimidation and reduce anxiety in the other. (Therapists are motivated to make themselves approachable. Some select casual, unostentatious clothing to accomplish this).
  • Confidence or its absence. The insecure risk transforming themselves into targets without even wearing a “kick me” sign. Their combined characteristics create a kind of metaphorical bullseye sensed by potential tormenters.
  • Other values. Perchance, a preference for comfortable clothes over expensive or impressive ones.
  • Habit (particularly true of older people who wear their hair in styles long out of fashion, or clothes unbecoming to someone past his body’s “use by” date). In effect, these people are also informing us they either don’t see themselves as they are or don’t care what the onlooker thinks.
  • Incidental information. On occasion you witness such things as whether a person is aware of his literal impact on neighbors, as when he clobbers another with his backpack or purse. Perhaps you will note how tied he is to his cell phone while at dinner with a companion, etc.

When a fellow human passes in review we instinctively size him up. We control many (but not all) of the characteristics of appearance leading to the impression we are trying to project.

It is worth knowing how people read you. Indeed, this is just as important as recognizing what self you’d like onlookers to see. Introverts often believe their shyness is obvious, when in fact they are frequently misidentified as arrogant. The failure to “join in” is interpreted as being “stuck up.”

Unless a good friend delivers difficult feedback or you have heard unflattering commentary in a therapy group or from your boss, you might not recognize your impact on others. Not even your counselor will be frank with you unless he believes it is in your interest and that you can take the pain of such a message without dissolving on his office carpet. Messy, by the way.

Not everyone works hard to manage his impression, but you leave clues whether you are making the effort or not, aware of what the impression is or not. You are a kind of walking, talking advertisement.

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Regrettably, many spend more time (and money) putting a brand on their “package” than improving what is inside it. Frequently, the person conveying characteristics required to get a job or spouse anticipates disaster when time exposes his true self. In the end, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, no matter how velvety and enticing the dish looks.

On the other hand, some qualities are only on the surface. Attempts at finding their depth is the equivalent of fishing for tuna in a desert: they are not there to be found. If, for example, “I am beautiful” is the intended message of the one drawing your eye, there is nothing but the outside — nothing more below the surface with respect to that characteristic. And qualities like intimidation also depend on the exterior of things, at least in part. Competence, intellect, morality, and companionability are less likely to be correctly and completely inferred from how we look.

All of us, at one time or another, try to sell the product named “me.” Best, of course, if the underlying goods are worthy of the value suggested by externalities. Making it so can be a lifetime project. Do remember, however, that the object inside the gift-wrapped box needn’t be perfect to do the job.

The shine on everything wears away. The ideal is to possess something underneath more worthwhile and lasting than an alluring glow. Time is going to alter the package. Few grow up wanting to look like a 60-year-old as fast as possible.

Some of you doubt that you have much extraordinary under the surface — or any idea how to obtain such qualities as you wish were present. Yet they may already be there, in which case all you lack is confidence in what you offer.

A pleasant surprise is in store if only you can recognize what is in the package. The bubble wrap might safeguard the tender contents, but can also obscure what is protected.

Here’s hoping the container, like a box of Cracker Jack, holds a prize you want and tastes as sweet.

—

The gift box icon is the work of Zeus Box (kuswanto) and is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

July 12, 2015

What Your Therapist Might Not Mention: How Assumptions about Happiness Cause Your Unhappiness

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I’m about to suggest you challenge your beliefs. Why? Because I’ll bet many of them aren’t working. Yes, you — the guy with the comb over!

Unless you are unlucky, you possess a level of convenience far greater than the kings and queens of history. I’m referring to indoor plumbing, TV, and computers. You have the possibility of air travel, superior medical care, and a better chance of a long life. Are you happier than they were?

Probably not.

Perhaps the route we plot to emotional well-being isn’t the best one.

  • Material wealth (aka, “The American Dream”) is not the road to happiness. Beyond income of $70,000 per year, money doesn’t generate much moment-to-moment improvement in your emotional state.
  • Most people don’t spend money wisely once their necessities are obtained. Research suggests you will achieve more well-being by purchasing experiences over things. Moreover, if you buy coffee for the guy behind you in line you’ll get more bliss than if you order a more expensive drink for yourself.
  • Comparisons to people alive today (in terms of wealth, status, and the things they own) probably matter more to you than comparisons to your ancestors. We are reminded far more than our forebears of our relative disadvantage next to the highly placed folks around us. People tend to compare “up” — to those better off  — more often than “down.” Thank radio, TV, and the Internet for highlighting your disadvantage. No such information sources existed 100 years ago.
  • Once you get something you want (an object, an accomplishment or a baby), the achievement will shortly lose its fascination. Like the kid at Christmas, your new toy soon moves to the shelf. (Warning: Don’t put your kid on a shelf!) The data demonstrate that growing children make parents less happy than they were before the stork delivered them. As to trophies, they become part of the background, not the foreground of your life. The thrill disappears and your level of happiness drops. This is called hedonic adaptation. We live on a hedonic treadmill and find it impossible to permanently race ahead and keep our joy elevated.
  • Rest — many of us want more — is a recipe for disaster. Too much time on our hands permits troubled thoughts to unsettle us.

Put those items together and you will recognize we aren’t very good at knowing what will make us happy. Worse yet, we believe we are entitled to happiness. I doubt that our grandparents believed this. Notions of “fairness” and “deserving” weren’t as common. The idea of being singled out for punishment by man or fate was unseemly to talk about. Being a “man” meant not complaining. Bad things happened. Mistakes were made. Rub some dirt on the wound and get back into the game.

I am not talking here about frank physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, but rather the common ups and downs of life including betrayal by friends, cheating of all kinds, the loss of jobs, non-devastating accidents and injuries, and even illness.

Today we challenge authority for inadequacies routinely accepted as a part of life 50 years ago. We complain about doctors and school teachers. Perfection, or close to it, is expected. Things are supposed to work, not break down. We blame someone else when they don’t perform as advertised. Since everything does eventually wear out — human and machine — we feel cheated. Somehow we’ve lost an understanding of the temporary nature of our creations, the imperfect nature of everything. We are unhappier for believing in permanence and near perfection as the natural state of things — assumptions about what life is supposed to be and won’t ever be.

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Technology has spoiled us. We don’t typically observe our loved ones suffer and die in our homes any more. They are elsewhere, caught in the miracle of medicine. In a world where 60 is the new 40, no one is expected to die at 50, the average life expectancy in the first decade of the last century. We’ve become aggrieved and petulant, demanding someone else make our lives better. We wait for perfect cures and perfect washing machines never requiring repair or replacement, with a guarantee of happiness because of them.

Humanity makes a crucial mistake. We misunderstand a common phrase: “the cost of living.” Ask 100 well-educated people for a definition and 99 will say, “the money a family needs to survive —  enough food and a decent place to live.”

Wrong.

The real cost of living consists of the bruises, injuries, and heartbreaks endured in any life; the disappointments and the wearing away. The need to replace things, change ideas, and say goodbye far too often. The betrayals and violations. The personal mistakes and poor choices. The Humpty Dumptyness of life. The regret, guilt, and anxiety. The tears. The fear of the future and the wish to “do over” the past. The decline and fall of things more personal than the Roman Empire.

I don’t think this is a dystopian view of life, but a realistic one. Much else makes life worth its toll: friendship, love, sports, and books. Or food, art, architecture, and the beauty of nature. How about kindness, music, and sex? Add victory, accomplishment, and learning — all of these are wonderful. Worth, to me, the cost of living and more.

Consider a suggestion: erase all your assumptions about how life is supposed to work, whatever advice your mom gave you, and take a second look. Decide for yourself whether your beliefs are working. Be an iconoclast. Break the graven images in your home and in your head. Start with a blank sheet of paper and challenge all you know. You might need to look for happiness in new attitudes, activities, goals, and people.

One other thing. Give life everything you have. Don’t play it safe in the hope of avoiding a knockout punch.

Life will impose its cost of living whether you take your best shot or not. You might as well get your money’s worth.

—

The second image comes from page 9 of Denslow’s Humpty Dumpty. It is sourced from Thornamentalist via Wikimedia Commons.

June 28, 2015

A Big Question You’d Like to Ask Your Therapist: “What is Your Story?”

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The ultimate question is always: “What is your story, doc? Not just hints about your life or anecdotes that are instructive or amusing, but a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. What is the truth, if there ever is such a thing, about how you came to be the person you are?”

To start, I didn’t learn anything in my first 20 years. OK, I did learn some things, but many of those needed unlearning over the coming decades.

I listened to stories and — much later — became a good story-teller, to which my children will attest. I had to get over the awful stories I imbibed in order to tell my own. Mom’s stories were tragic, a snapshot of her childhood unhappiness as Jeanette Fabian: the misery of her starvation due to poverty, tuberculosis due to starvation, and the Great Depression driving it all. From these I learned fear of what might (and would, in her estimation) go wrong. Much time passed before I recognized many things were already going right for me; and I could improve still more if I took hold of the chances before me and deafened myself to the footsteps of disaster at my back.

My father, Milt Stein, told funny tales he made up out of nothing. Dad and I were co-hosts in an imaginary radio program of his invention when I was tiny. The “broadcast” was called the Jedna Chennai Peanut Show, named after two Polish language newspapers he sold on Chicago streets as an 11-year-old; and, I imagine, I was the “peanut,” an edible he loved to the end of his days. Real peanuts and me, I mean.

The major stories of dad’s life had to do with acts of self-assertion, something he didn’t always do, but made a difference when he did. The tales were told and retold. For example, he took a course in wood shop in high school, requiring him to make things with saws, planes, and other tools. He was poor at this, but did manage to build a shield, one of the items the instructor said was enough to pass the course.

Somehow he failed. Undeterred, Milt reminded the teacher of his statement about the requirements to get a passing mark. The instructor grudgingly changed dad’s grade to that of a “conditional” pass: if he completed the next course in the sequence with an acceptable mark, dad would be awarded the lowest possible “pass” in the one just finished, thanks to his barely adequate shield. It didn’t occur to me then, but there was a message within the oft-told anecdote: to stand up for yourself and keep plugging. In other words, not mom’s prediction of impending disaster: in effect, that a brick will inevitably fall on your head if you walk beside tall buildings.

My mother was trying to protect me from repeating the trauma of her own life, but succeeded only in terrifying me. How difficult for a parent to grasp the world has changed — the world of their child is not the world of their childhood. I spent 20 years and parts of several more living in the shadow of Jeanette Fabian’s catastrophic youth. Sometime later the sunlight conveyed indirectly by my father broke through the threatening clouds called “your future.” Dad’s “shield,” quite real in my imagination, might be used to push through the everyday battles of life. I needed only to decode his obscure message: the advice to stand up and keep plugging; the advice I don’t think he realized he conveyed, but awaited my discovery nonetheless.

LESSON: You are going to grow up with stories; the things said and those unsaid, like pieces of a puzzle; the anecdotes of your parents and perhaps your grandparents, and some composite version of all the tales you hear as they collide with each other and form a “family” story. You will also fashion a tale from the lived experience of your own existence. NONE OF THESE STORIES IS TRUE! They represent, instead, one of many possible ways to make sense of life in general and the specifics of our time on the planet, in particular. DON’T BELIEVE ANY OF THEM. DON’T IDENTIFY TOO CLOSELY WITH ANY OF THEM. Your relatives’ stories are not yours. You can’t relive them, even if that were a good idea.

As far as your narrative is concerned, you are in the middle of it now. Your story is malleable, like bronze in the hands of a metal sculptor. The creation is a work of imagination and slant, giving you lots of room to experiment — to change its shape. The architecture isn’t frozen until you live it. Indeed, not even then, as you reinterpret the events. You can be the guy who didn’t pass his wood shop course cleanly or the one who persuaded the teacher to do the right thing.

Change your story and you will change your life, your life satisfaction, and the lives of those around you. Think you will crash and burn, and you cut the chances of prosperity. Believe you are as good as your press releases, a self-made person who never benefited from any luck or help from others, and you will be full of hot air and look down on those around you. Every one of us must change our story as we walk through time — refining, redefining, recreating; and making the best of what we have learned from others, all we’ve experienced, heaps of our successes, and a dash of suffering.

What’s your story? You never know whose tiny ears are listening.

—

The top image is the April-May, 1939 issue of Marvel Science Stories. The artist was Norman Saunders, restoration by Adam Cuerdan. The cover is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

 

June 21, 2015

Obligation to Parents and Other Traps Built of Guilt, Kindness, and Hope

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I can begin this no other way than by quoting from Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

This stanza will strike you as funny, dark, or both. Not to mention, profane. Today’s question is, what is an adult to do about it? The parents, not the profanity.

Therapists are not in the habit of telling you to “dump” the folks. Yet, sometimes the work of therapy leads there. I will not recount all the bad things done by parents. You are aware of them, including their extraordinary range and frank ingenuity, as if mom and dad stayed up late refining their torture kit.

Most adult offspring hang in, maintain contact, show respect, and (for a while at least) hope for love. Yes, some of the now-matured children echo Larkin’s profanity and never look back, but not as many as you think.

What keeps us in such relationships long after we’ve left the home? Here are a few of the reasons in random order:

  • “They are old. The events happened ages ago. They did the best they could. I don’t wish to hurt them.” If the caretakers reformed themselves these statements are adaptive and considerate, even without receiving an apology for past mistakes. Instead, let’s focus on only those parents who persist with criticism, setting sibling against sibling, praising one to down the other, and more creative forms of mistreatment.
  • “They are my parents. I can’t just walk away. They did lots of good for me, too. I’m obligated.” In addition to those things they did to you, they did many for you: food, clothing, and even moments of affection. The inconsistency of an abusive elder ties us in knots. Were they harsh in every action, dismissing them would be easier. I can’t tell you how to weigh the good and bad in the abstract, balancing one against another on the scales of justice, but examination often reveals you came out on the losing end. Perhaps more important, you are still losing. Indeed, you may yet spend a good part of your life’s psychic energy blaming yourself, having been taught to take fault, thus compounding your injury.
  • “Shouldn’t I forgive them? My religion says so.” Forgiveness for an aggressor who removed your spleen yesterday is not the same as forgiving someone while he is slicing out your heart today. Mercy is a generous act, to oneself and to the one who harmed you. Don’t, however, make a foolish decision by giving anyone the tacit permission to repeat the crime.
  • “The parents of my friends were just like them. Some were worse.” Perhaps, but irrelevant. Were everyone to poison their child, the violence would not be acceptable. Were everyone else to beat their children for 20 minutes a day, 10 minutes would not be a kindness.
  • “They had such a terrible life themselves. They didn’t know better.” Your mom and dad still can learn.
  • “I’m not that sort of person. I can’t be mean to them.” Ending the relationship with parents or limiting contact might be thought of as heartless. My guess is, however, if an animal bites your hand whenever you offer food, your generosity might change over time. Moreover, few of the really awful parents are “hurt” by a child’s late rejection. Anger and further indictments of the adult child are more typical. Corrupt parents have been known to deny the crime. Much wrong doing gets lost in the night and fog of passing time.
  • “I’d feel guilty.” Something for you and your counselor to work on.
  • “I should be over them already.” Maybe, but is this approach working for you?
  • “I don’t want to be a whiner. I should be tougher, not so sensitive.” Those who utter these words are justifying their mistreatment and running from the past. The notion of “getting tough” suggests those who don’t are cowardly. On the contrary, facing reality displays real courage.
  • “What’s the point of talking to them about it now?” We are assuming the mistreatment takes a different shape these days than when you were a kid, but it hasn’t stopped. The point is to get it to stop now, by conversation or removal of yourself.

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  • “Talking about them is a betrayal.” Discussion with your therapist isn’t the same as a national broadcast. You do them no harm in this way.
  • “Isn’t there nobility in suffering? Don’t we all have our cross to bear?” Not all suffering is noble. As an old colleague used to say, “Get off the cross, we need the wood.”
  • “I’d be ashamed to raise the issue in the family. I’d be blamed. What would my friends think? They always remind me how special my parents are.” Only those who make themselves strong risk being tossed from the arena. Therapy can help with this, especially if you have never said anything to them about how much they hurt you. Recognize that giving them a chance to repent and reform is an act of love and generosity. Similarly, exiting the home takes the bull’s eye off your chest and moves your body from the rifle range. You are not required to aid their target practice as long as they live. By giving in to the terror of family wide disapproval you accept the role of a victim.
  • “Maybe they will change — praise me, show me love, be good to me.” Ah! Here at last is the big reason, the one most often unacknowledged. This motive drives the willingness to continue to serve as cannon fodder in the hope of being recognized for your devotion. But misplaced hope is soul-killing, making you complicit in your own destruction. Should affection never come, you are dealing with what economists call a “sunk cost;” like throwing more money into an investment that has already cost you a fortune. More suffering is all you get in return.

The Marilyn Monroes of the world remain unhappy despite “having everything.” The solution requires them to challenge the long-standing internalized negative self-attributions, their critical thoughts or beliefs about themselves. If the long reach of a damaging childhood is at the core, confronting parents is not essential, but you must face the history written on your skin. You cannot recover if you continue to blame yourself and remain the victim. In childhood you had no choice. In adulthood you usually do, though the choice is not free of charge.

If your parents installed a permanent line in your vein from which to suck out your life’s blood, no good comes from sitting and watching, as you do when a phlebotomist takes a blood sample. When childhood harm is indelibly stamped on the soul of the patient, there is no healthy alternative but to examine the source of the injury, grieve your losses, and reevaluate your guardians: what they did or didn’t do. Even more, when you are still being bled, the line must be removed.

Nothing about stopping or reducing the misery is easy. The treatment of such old but continuing wounds takes much time. My patients often tried everything they could to repair or improve the relationship before setting any limits on their parents. In doing so, they attempted to inoculate themselves against experiencing guilt subsequent to their decision to remove the bull’s-eye from their chest.

Still, this is not for everyone. Such a solution doesn’t fit the majority of us who had decent parents or wonderful elders. Nor, regrettably, do all of us possess the strength to protect ourselves.

Confrontation is not required, although many benefit by standing up, looking their aggressor in the eye, and saying, “Never again.” This is rather like finally getting the best of the playground bully.

You must also evaluate your own part in the sour relationship. An old injury does not give you permission to complicate your intimate contact today or become the thing you hate, however understandable.

Much of psychotherapy deals with the past, but treatment does so in the service of making your life better today. The world is a tough place, a kind place, a contradictory place: a place we are “just visiting,” as we are reminded by the game Monopoly. Time is short to put your life together.

You might have lost the game yesterday. Losing again today is not required.

Your heart waits patiently for its cure. The treatment is not intended to harm your parents, but to heal you. The firing line is no place to live out your days.

—

The first photo is Agaricus Silvicola, Father and Son by Frank Gardiner. The second comes from the 1963 NBC TV series, The Eleventh Hour. From left to right, Keenan Wynne, Linda Evans, and Jack Ging. Both images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

June 14, 2015

Erotic Transference: When You Hunger for Your Therapist’s Touch

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Is erotic transference merely a sexual fantasy about your therapist? Is it a desire for steamy, big screen sex with him? Might something else be happening?

Erotic transference is about more than these brief descriptions suggest. First, let’s deal with what simple “transference” is. Here is Wikipedia’s take:

One definition of transference is “the inappropriate repetition in the present (moment) of a relationship that was important in a person’s childhood.” Another definition is “the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object.”

I prefer to broaden the definition a bit. Let’s assume you meet a new person who reminds you of someone else — someone you knew well at an earlier point in life. The resemblance might not even register. Instinct leads you to make certain assumptions about him and to impute qualities to him similar to those of the man in your past. In effect, you are reaching back into your history and transferring feelings and beliefs to your present understanding of the new individual. Moreover, it is likely you will react to this acquaintance as you responded to the previous one, including whatever hopes or desires you unload from man #1 and redirect to man #2.

An experimental or behavioral psychologist would call this “stimulus generalization.” You are acting and reacting to person #2 in a style somewhat like your behavior toward person #1 because of your perception of similarity between them. They needn’t look alike or act identically. Rather, something about them or the situation triggers unconscious feelings and behaviors.

Think back to Pavlov’s dogs. If a dog learns to salivate to the sound of a bell (because the noise precedes the delivery of food), he will also begin to get his juices flowing when a different bell-like sound is heard. The canine, of course, doesn’t say to himself, “Oh, food is coming!” He simply reacts. Transference is like that.

This type of transference or stimulus generalization needn’t be sexual. That is, it need not generate erotic sensations and preoccupations. You can simply enjoy being around the freshly contacted person because of the underlying unconscious affinity toward him derived from the earlier relationship. Similarly, you can automatically dislike, distrust, or detest him, any of which would constitute “negative” transference.

Still with me? Now let’s apply this to your therapist. Add other sentiments (I’ll talk about only positive ones) to those already mentioned. These might include tremendous respect (even reverence) for your healer, confidence, or gratitude; as well as putting him on a pedestal because he is an authority in a position of power relative to you.

Can you now imagine how affection might enter the equation? This man listens to you, comforts you, and works toward your well-being. The therapist is calm and benign. Your relationship is not (I trust) fraught with lack of consideration, conflicts of interest, and the disregard present in all our lives outside the doctor’s office. The consulting room becomes a place of refuge, hope, and possible growth. Your counselor morphs into a magician of the soul, a person who is hard not to idealize. Should he possess a fine physicality, then the slide is further greased to generate sexual attraction; if he is not handsome, the absence of surface beauty may make no difference at all. Even shrinks unpleasing to the eye can carry the same kind of transferential aura.

Last, add one more ingredient to this witches’ brew: the sexual nature of the human race. Spend enough time with a particular member of whichever gender you prefer and, assuming there is even a small amount of appeal, you might discover the affinity grows. Were it otherwise you and I wouldn’t be here. We were built to mate and create offspring who do the same thing. Those ancient humans who didn’t are not the ancestors of the seven billion of us on the planet today. Nature imbedded this prescription in our DNA.

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Positive transference toward the doc is rather like a trance. Indeed, the first syllables of transference and trance are similar. Think of the honeymoon period of a romantic relationship or the youthful idealization of a parent or professor. Elements of awe are present. Rationality is not the driver.

Transference can also be triggered by unresolved issues with a parent, as the Wikipedia definitions quoted above suggest. A client might perceive the counselor as a love object in all senses. The doctor’s presence in the patient’s life may silently signal the opportunity to win (at last) the perfect love of a parent substitute. Ironically, the shrink is (or should be) as unobtainable as a time machine designed to give you a better childhood than the one you lived.

Rather than altering the past, transference provides the chance to “work through” old feelings about parents or previous lovers within the consulting room. The counselor helps to grieve the original loss and disappointment of the client’s life in the hope of resolving both the unfinished business of the patient’s emotional past and letting the air out of his irrational attachment to the therapist.

What other meanings can a sexual preoccupation with a therapist indicate? I treated patients who tested me — wanted to find out if I would take the amorous and sensual “bait,” in order to discover whether I was really trustworthy. A patient’s attempt to persuade the therapist to violate his professional ethics can also be, in part, a way to avoid underlying treatment issues. Clients will sometimes use their sexuality in the pursuit of power within a relationship which would otherwise leave the doc “in charge.” Still others confuse love and sex, wanting to be held by the doctor as much or more than penetrated by him.

How do you know whether you are experiencing an erotic transference? Dreaming about your therapist from time to time isn’t remarkable, even if sexualized. I’d say there are two practical markers of a strong erotic transference:

  • You are so preoccupied with your therapist as a potential sexual object that you can’t focus on the important treatment issues.
  • You become repeatedly aroused in the session to the point of becoming lubricated (if female) or erect (if male).

Your shrink is unlikely to address the issue unless you take the initiative to do so first. Why? Suggesting you are sexually motivated can be profoundly embarrassing to the patient. It might be taken as a rebuke. Moreover, the therapist isn’t always right. Trust and safety are big issues in treatment. Good counselors avoid fueling the discomfort of what is already a risky business of self-disclosure and “naked” examination of the psyche. Pointing to possible sexual arousal in the patient is often interpreted as erotic interest from the doc.

Should you experience an erotic transference that interferes with your psychotherapy, the question of mentioning it to your therapist arises. If the healer is well-practiced, ethical, and wise, he has heard and accepted such revelations before. He will try his best to treat you with gentleness while, at the same time, informing you that such relationship (if acted upon) would injure both you and himself. Questions of your attraction to him are irrelevant (except as grist for the therapeutic mill) if he is good at his work and maintains the barrier to sexual intimacy that is for your benefit.

Your feelings are not good or bad. The garment of lust misplaced on your therapist’s shoulders, however understandable its arrival there, must be unraveled.

The best counselors might be thought of as guides through a maze. Life is full of mazes. Each of us has our own and all of us feel confused or lost at times. Erotic transference is just another part of the puzzle, another challenge along the path. Not abnormal or bizarre, but the material of life subjected to the alchemy of therapy; from which, we hope, to create sustenance for the journey home.*

—

I wrote a sequel with quite a different slant on the topic two years after the one you’ve just read: Is Erotic Transference Ever the Thing We Call Love?

*Thanks to Tina at her blog, xrsize12, for suggesting I write about this topic. The images both come from the 1963 movie, Charade, with Carey Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The first of these was downloaded to Wikipedia by BlueStar.