Speaking of dreams, here are a few bad ones I’ve had lately: I dreamed of a dog falling through the air. That’s all. And I dreamed that I had a fancy end table made out of a laminated shiny human skeleton bent more or less into table shape, which I blame one percent on the general state of the world and 99 percent on having seen that dreadful exhibit years ago with the dead bodies preserved by plastination; these were also featured in Casino Royale. In the dream, my end table had outlived its usefulness and so I needed to take it out to the trash area.
In fact, maybe it was only then that I realized it had been made out of a human skeleton. In any event, I was scared to touch it, even to grasp some of its knobby parts with the tippy-tips of my fingers, and I think I may actually have thought, in the dream, “Maybe Tom would like to come down and do this,” and it’s possible that in the end, I said, “Oh, I can do this,” and just did it, but I won’t swear to it.
I also dreamed Tom invited me to a BDSM sex party (and that was VERY like real life—it’s an issue between us, Tom and his endless BDSM sex parties) and in the dream, his girlfriend, who looked quite like Amy Winehouse, was kind of rude to me, and then I realized there was what amounted to a biker bar across the street, so the evening was probably going to end in violence, when the bikers came across the street to beat all the sex party people up (uh oh, is this giving too much insight into my psyche?), so I decided to leave, but I couldn’t locate my bicycle.
By the way, that dream I had about not liking my mental health professional explaining me to myself even if she is right falls into the category of very literal dreams, because it came after this happened in real life: I stopped seeing my mental health professional partly because she explains me to myself, which I don’t like, even if she’s right.
To summarize what has happened in therapy for the past ten years, bearing in mind that I only go now and then, and sometimes don’t go for months: I spent seven years being furious at everything she said, and then I got so angry I didn’t go at all for a year or two, and then there was a year or so where I would go in, tell her everything that had happened since I’d last seen her, and then we might discuss current events, and then I would leave.
Lately, however, I must confess I have become interested in myself at younger ages (yes, I’ll just say it: my inner child), particularly myself at age seven or so (no, let’s not confuse the matter: at seven exactly) and I wanted help revisiting that era.
Here’s why I didn’t think I could get there myself: When I went to a workshop with one of the authors of When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies in the past year, I told a story about when I was a teenager, and how I didn’t understand why I had felt a certain way, and Carol Munter said, “Well, you know, maybe such-and-such,” and I was like, “Oh! I would never have thought of that.”
To back up even farther, I went to another Carol Munter workshop a few years ago—they were both extremely helpful—and after that, I visited a few therapists to see if I might find one I really liked, which is not to say I don’t like the one I’ve seen for 25 or so years. All the irritation aside, I like her very much: I love her, and she loves me. This is implicit and explicit.
But it did seem like we were having the same session over and over and over, and so I went to see Monica, and I really liked her, and our session was a bit emotional for me, which seemed like a good sign, but you know, her office was in a kind of gloomy location, and it was going to, you know, cost a lot, and I realized I was going to have to tell her the whole story from scratch, which was going to take forever, and here I already had a perfectly good therapist who already knew the entire story, and so I decided not to continue seeing Monica.
But then after I got interested in my seven-year-old self, I decided I needed actual assistance, needed someone to notice the things I would never notice myself, or maybe just needed someone to hear the story again, in case I myself might notice something new in the retelling, and so about six weeks ago, I stopped seeing Deborah and started seeing Monica.
My last session with Deborah was surprisingly difficult. Frankly, between you and me, while I didn’t expect her to say, “Cool; there’s the door—later!”, I also didn’t expect her to say “I would prefer that you would do that work with me,” which is what she did say, and she seemed a bit upset.
When I said nothing much seemed to be happening, she said she kind of was in the position of having to wait for me to be ready, which I found faintly offensive: Shouldn’t she, in her big bag of therapeutic tricks, have some way to nudge the extremely recalcitrant, easily angered and very well defended client/patient/customer along a bit, at least so that one year might be just a bit different from the one that preceded it?
In the end, she said that she trusted my instincts, and that her door will always be open, and I have every expectation of seeing her again. It’s a forever relationship.
Now, at my first session with Monica, I told her about dynamics that were occurring with two friends. She encouraged me to notice, in minute detail, what I felt as I described the two situations, and after I left, it was very clear to me what I wanted to do (back away from one and mend things with the other, both since easily accomplished).
As it happened, what turned out to be my final session, for the time being, with Deborah had already been scheduled for the following evening, so while I was there, I told her the same two stories, and she said, of one situation, to paraphrase, “Oh, no, no, no—you don’t need that in your life,” and of the other, “Here’s why that bothered you: this, this, and this,” though she clearly assumed this was a friendship that should go forward.
She could not have been more correct—she knows me very well, and has paid close attention all these years—but what happened with Monica was more rewarding, where the truth was obvious once I really felt it, and that’s why I had that dream about telling Deborah I didn’t like that she was being directive: the exact same thing could easily have happened in real life (except probably for the belted dress with the little red designs).
But here’s the kicker (maybe): the last couple of times I saw Monica, I have just told her everything that has happened since our meeting a week prior, and haven’t felt much of anything, and when I mentioned to her that I was there specifically to do the detailed work of feeling, she kindly said that sometimes it will be a good time to delve into the feelings, and sometimes there are stories that need to be told.
In other words, feeling or feelings will occur when I’m ready, which is pretty much exactly what Deborah said. Which basically means that I (ugh) will myself have to do the work to sink into an experience and feel it and let someone else see this, and I imagine I could do this with either Monica or Deborah or any one of the other million therapists in Northern California.
Nonetheless, for now, I’m sticking with Monica. I think certain bad habits just got far too well practiced with Deborah, but I won’t be surprised if I find myself six weeks from now saying sternly to Monica, just as I did a million times with Deborah, “Why do you think THAT’S any of your business?”
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