by Restin Wells

Chapter Seven

It seemed impossible to speak the words about dependency, or even offer a hint.  A hint was even worse because it added cunning to the first sin.  But  Dr. T had also urged the importance of expressing anger to her directly.  I needed to, and was obsessed with all the sarcastic things I wanted to say about the infernal cancellations.  But pride kept me from letting her know just how intensely I cared.  Yelling and fuming about it would be a dead giveaway.  And even if I knew she knew, it was still hard.  I would lie awake long into the night, urgently pre-planning every word I would say in the coming therapy hour!  I needed to say something significant without revealing anything forbidden by the "other" self I had discovered.

I knew it was incorrect, from the Freudian standpoint, to censor my talk that way, and in that respect caused some of the difficulty of therapy.  But, frankly, it was as if there were a guillotine hanging over my head, threatening me with its dire forbiddance!  If Dr. T talked about something scary first, I could also... but she was talking less and less.

It seemed to me that since my dependency issue became fully conscious, Dr. T could help alleviate obstructive amounts of guilt.  Perhaps she could desensitize me if she freely used the "shameful" words in my vocabulary, such as: "I need you", or "Don't go away", or "Please help me"...stuff like that, which everyone else seemed able to say easily enough.   I assumed she understood me enough to know what those words were that, I couldn't say.  It could be done through the technique of "reflection."   And it was not about the sex words, primarily.  For some people of this sophisticated age, the words around love and dependency are actually more scary than sex.  And that seemed to be so for me.

 It seemed logical that a therapist who doesn't use the dependency words easily is conveying a warning of, "don't lean on me."   I reasoned that the therapist should be confident of his ability to set limits on the patient's actions, in order to feel safe.    Discussing primal needs doesn't imply approval for the patient to suck on him or her like a baby forever, neither figuratively nor literally.

The sexual aspects of the transference relationship could be explored gradually as I gained confidence in managing my inner world.  Raw sexual references were extremely frightening to my sick part during my early recovery stages. Transference dependency could be called whatever the patient felt was safe to call it until he gained emotional fortitude.  The patient will come to realize, in due time, at a pace he can bear, that some of his desire to relive childhood must be frustrated in order to mature onto a higher level.  And it will come to be a fully acceptable integration, though it seems grievous at the time.  Talking about desire for nurturing does gratify it a little, and arouses hope for more, but it also allows for the "working through" that is so essential in therapy.  But allowing an open secret to go on and on, as in my case, seemed to me a most damaging, dishonest situation.   I began to horde an enormous load of resentment.  I was beginning to feel like a pressure-cooker about to explode! 

Meanwhile, Dr. Tilden seemed completely oblivious to my concerns as she appeared to drop out from under me totally.  Then she announced another vacation!

As a result of that,  I suddenly  came to learn one of the most important coping skills in all this hard, cruel world:

I LEARNED THAT  ALL OUT, SCREAMING RAGE, COULD BRING COMPLETE
RELIEF FROM THE SICK PANIC!

Not that I did it in front of her there.  I couldn't yet.  But when I was in the car going home... yelling, and hitting the steering wheel, at her denseness to my  concerns.  How could she go on vacation now!   I got so angry at her I wished she would get out of my life forever!  I would reject her!  I would turn her into a nothing, just like she was doing me! 

That new feeling!  That new attitude.  That conscious, red-faced rejecting of everything Dr. T meant to me... Suddenly, as a total surprise, I didn't feel afraid anymore. And ten minutes later, I still didn't feel the fear.  I got all the twenty-five miles back home, still fuming--but feeling no fear.  It had been like pouring water on a fire.  It obliterated all feeling of emotional sickness, the separation anxiety, and weakness of any kind. And it lasted several hours.  But the anxiety did come back.  And I was tortured with the additional anxiety of what my anger was doing  to the love I needed to feel. 

But, a few days later, when I got sufficiently rageful again, the same magic relief worked again.  In fact, it worked every time, without fail. I even began to try pumping up anger artificially, something I found very hard to do.  I couldn't just turn it on like a faucet.  But I found that imagining Dr. T's meanness could get the anger ball rolling.   I  was still afraid to put it on Dr. T herself at the sessions, but nevertheless, that anger soon became my main, work-horse control over the strange emotional sickness, the suicidal urge, and mysterious panic-fear that had been my main symptoms for years.  I didn't understand the dynamics of it all.  All I knew then, and all I needed to know, was that all-out  rageful rejection of Dr. T, hard as it was to do it, was the saving of my life.  It was the world's greatest discovery!

But I was still bonded to her.  I endured  her vacation, and went back to the sessions.  I still had to.  But life began to change for me rapidly.   I began to hold a ray of hope that maybe I wouldn't have to die after all.  Though maintaining a state of non-stop, burning anger wasn't a happy place, I could live with it.  But I can't say even that was easy at first.  When I lost the anger, it was very hard to work it up again to the inferno intensity required to push out the fear.  And another extremely important situation was coming in,  too.  It wasn't up to me  entirely. There were times I was supposed to be angry, and then times I was supposed to feel love again for Dr. T.  And then there were times I wasn't supposed to think of either.  It began to alternate, and I began to realize I had better follow where "It" wanted to go, or else the fear would come slamming back upon me like never before!  I had to learn to  LISTEN AND FOLLOW.  And "It" began to change its mind hour by hour.  I felt desperate to stay  with it, for if only I could do what was wanted at the time it was wanted, I could steer clear of the fear.  It was as if the fear were being used on me like a merciless whip, to punish me for failing to go with the twists and turns.  

That went on all day, every day   But I was beginning to learn things too.  For one thing, it was very heartbreaking to have mean feelings toward someone I needed so much to love.  And it didn't seem logical, or even fair, to have such anger for my doctor.  I felt I didn't have the right to blame her for my problems.  As a person who claimed to be a Christian, and not wanting to be petty, I tended to defuse myself.  I would lose the anger, and the fear would grab hold again. But, I learned to get around that self-sabotage by making a deal with myself that I would take time to be rational and kind, later that day... but for now I needed the hundred-percent anger.  I also reminded myself that just imagining mean things for Dr. T didn't make them happen to her in reality.  I had to tell myself that she didn't even know I was thinking such bad things about her.  She would still be there at her office for the next session.  My thoughts couldn't make her disappear, or actually injure her. And I realized that was a leftover from early childhood thinking.  It was coming undiluted from the "other" one within me..  the little child that still thought as a baby thinks.

But, from then on, I began to have a new kind of relationship with Dr. T.  It was an educating about anger, which every normal baby encounters as he faces the limitations of mother.  Every baby learns how to deal with frustration and rage when he or she doesn't get every little thing  he needs or wants.  It is both normal and necessary, in judicious, gradual measures.  But I had skipped over it all. I had repressed all feeling in trying to deal with the one horrendous event of my mother's death.  I had no feelings after that on which to learn how to cope with feelings.   But what I was learning from Dr. T was that rageful crying over her hardness would teach me to separate from my bondedness, and live to tell about it!   I was learning to remove her from the Center of my Soul. My angry rejection let me feel myself to be a whole separate person, not just an extension of her.  I had even said to myself one time, that being forced  away from her was like having an amputation.  Now I would learn to feel another way.  It seemed  that I had never  felt such an  inner cohesion before.  Even though that faded in and out, it was there.   To my amazement, I felt perfectly free of pain when I lopped over into a personal power that complete.  I would suddenly feel clear-minded and as sharp as a tack.  My spaciness and jello-ego solidified into the peace of confidence.  I felt capable of running in the fast lane with anybody.   I would get in the car and go to town,  and do all the things a normal citizen should be able to do.  I would talk to people, go grocery shopping,  stop by the bank, etc.   Although the anger  burned my head and body with its heat,  it felt protecting and full of power potential.

But I found I had a problem of keeping  the anger separate from my dealings with the public.  I already knew I would never do anything to Dr. T. but I wasn't with her  more than an hour a week. I would find the anger spilling over into people who gave me a hard time, or just irritated me with stupidity.  I had never been rude, nor had the nerve to tell anyone off, before this.  I had everything to learn about dealing with gut-level, true anger.  I had always, like so many other people, pretended I didn't care about anybody enough to even notice what they tried to do to me.   The more important they were, the harder it was to really be angry at them.  I could be angry at a stranger who didn't matter, or rotten people in the news, or things like that in the distance.

I would put on my sunglasses, with my head up in the air, and stay perfectly cool, no matter what.  It was the perfect copout for not being able to face real pressure from anyone.  But, I found myself pushing the boundaries of my courage there.  A man at the Handyway store got mad at me for what he thought was butting in line , and I launched into a tirade about how I didn't  give a darn what his fool problem was and he could shut up about it.  He backed right down.  Then I got angry at a lady at the hardware store for keeping me waiting so long to help me find something, and I saw the sudden fear on her face.  It was then that I began to realize what cowards most people really are.  Even mean, tough-looking folks would fall apart right before me.  I felt so impressed by that.  If I let it, I could enjoy playing with it quite a lot. 

Yet, it made me feel guilty too.  Basically, and lucky for me, I didn't enjoy hurting people.  I never did.  But I was discovering the kind of self-respect that anyone has the right to own.  I was also beginning to take the first steps at really relating to people instead of  holding them at arms length, unable to get involved.

But, I had extremely important things to learn about anger.  There is a reason why people are afraid of anger.    I could now see how many people do enjoy smashing others, and use that power to full advantage. And losing control is a risk to be reckoned with.  But my education about anger,  put me in a new relationship with all people around me.  They became more like brothers and sisters in a common family, rather than inscrutable, powerful strangers.  I began to deal with people as equals, in both business and friendship.

I also had to remind myself of another essential factor.  Not all mean people are cowards.  There are many people out there who know just as much about rage as I was just learning.  Some of those won't have the fragility I had, nor the interest in learning anything good.  I could start something, and they might not let it go.  I could just imagine someone ramming my car off the road, or coming out to my house with a gun.  The last thing I needed then was a sworn enemy out to get me.  I was cruising for a bruising, and had better get things in perspective--fast.

So, I began to limit my outbursts in public.  I would go home and beat on a stack of newspapers, and cuss at the tope of my voice, in the privacy of my own home, and nobody would get hurt.  I might not get quite the satisfaction, but it would get me by.  Furthermore, if I really did hurt someone, I could go to jail.  I actually had to notice that, too, as if I had never heard of it.  Or, to be more accurate, I had to tell the "child" who just emerged, who never seemed to have heard of it.  I had to impress upon that child, urgently, that we could end up in a tangle of lawyers, police officers, and courts, at a time when we were  so over-sensitive that I often had to go home from town and put a pillow over my head to black out the world and its overwhelming people.  There were some things that, no matter what pain, or fear, or threat it was to me, I would not do.  I would have to be the Leader in certain things, no matter what!

Meanwhile, the anger I felt for Dr. Tilden, and what she represented in my unconscious, was a force with such firepower it shot me clear out of hell.  Actually, it was that defense of "omnipotent denial" that had worked so well as a little child to turn me into the cold little gal during the years before my breakdown.  I had learned the use of toughness early in life, but had failed to adjust it to all my other feelings too.   Now, that defense  returned, but in a conscious way, where I could  make it have its proper place among many ways of relating to people, and dealing with feelings.  Anger would become my servant, not my master.

Copyright © Restin Wells

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