NO PROGRESS

After thirteen months of therapy with Helen, things hadn’t improved.

On one occasion she said that she didn’t believe my grief was real because authentic grief was quiet. (Not true, as anyone can testify who’s heard someone react to being told that a loved one has unexpectedly died.) 

On another occasion she said that in our sessions what I was saying sounded rehearsed. Well, I was often in so much distress that, just as I had with Dr. A, I unburdened myself in obsessive fantasies about my next session during the days in between. In fantasy, I was able to pour out my feelings without inhibition, but in my actual sessions, I still wasn’t.

And speaking of fantasizing, I did a lot of it when I was young. My most frequent fantasies were replays of actual interactions I’d had with people. But in the replays, I imagined being in the other person’s head, having a variety of positive responses to our exchange. I suppose I did this partly out of insecurity and the need to reassure myself that I’d acquitted myself well and made a good impression—which I suspect came from an absence of positive mirroring by my parents, essential to the development of self-confidence and self-esteem.

I also remember that when I told her about my vivid, empowering year in Spain—when, for a time at least, I came into my own—she deprecated my achievement, saying that one’s student years are easy compared to real life. Really? Just try, as someone who struggles with anxiety and depression, to adapt to life in a foreign country where you don’t know anyone and can’t speak the language yet. What I needed from Helen back then, perhaps more than anything else, was positive mirroring—to help me reclaim some of the self-esteem that was dragging around my heels at the time.

She also suggested, near the end of my therapy, that I’d developed the masculine side of myself but not the feminine. Years later, Toni would point out to me that since I was a child I’d tried to take care of the feelings of the people around me. “What could be more feminine,” I would like to ask Helen, “than caretaking?”

Then came a day when Helen said she didn’t see me making any progress and was handing me over to another therapist at the Center—Beth.