I think my final straw was when I asked the psychologist in the therapy session if we could have a shared experience, shared distortion, a
“pre-arranged mood.”
Not so long after this question to her, I was told, famously, to “Shut Up!”
***
Up until this point in my life I had had a wife, a surgeon, a serial killer, a bartender, a musician, a stranger, a brother, a priest, a cop, and now a psychologist, tell me to shut up!
I also had a psychiatrist kill himself a few days after our first therapy meeting,
which I guess is a kind of a – shut up !
I knew something was probably wrong with me.
My therapist asked me what I was talking about,
a pre-arranged mood?
“Was meinen sie?” What do you mean?
Now of course we were speaking in German, her native tongue, not mine, and perhaps things were lost in translation.
Then again, we English speakers think differently than Germans.
I told her that we should now create a mood specifically reflective of my feelings when I’m not here with you. A mood that causes me normally great pain.
I proceeded to ask her if we could pretend to be two passengers on the sinking ship Titanic,
alone together in the same small 3rd class room,
on its way, all the way, down to the seafloor.
Our discussion would take place in our “crooked room” as it descended
down
down
down to the abyss.
I insisted we lean our chairs back, angled against the wall,
and she agreed, with a patronizing smile, teeth presented.
I knew what was coming would not be funny,
so I gifted her her little fake smile.
In “Descendance” I said would be our first mood.
It was going to hopefully be a 30 minute ride down, 30 minutes of talk, of therapy, of sharing, of oxygen running out, lights shutting down, noises emitting from where the sun doesn’t shine. My past rides down, mostly alone, took anywhere from a minute to three days to hit rock bottom, by myself, and not always necessarily alone. I sadly dragged anyone in near proximity with me down, down, down. My poor wife, children, friends, colleagues…Of course there would be pushing and pulling, darkness, changes in compression, altitude, attitude, thinking, ideas, mood swings, sound, and shallow breathing, tears.
I then informed my therapist that the second half of the therapy hour should be the second pre-arranged mood:
“Rock Bottom”
And it would be a conversation as we, you and I, sat at the bottom of the ocean with all the pressure, lack of light, coldness, boredom, thinning air, silences and you,
my absolutely un-inspiring company, like most…
Then I said, “If you want to kill yourself down here, please do it off these premises.”
“I do not want to have to face another of life`s messes! “
And that’s when she said SHUT UP!
Loud and in psychologist anger.
Now I’m sure this reaction about my comments was finally just an explosion of a volcano person fueled by frustration and burnout.
Other fuels present by both of us were: lack of patience, wasted repetition of verbiage, questionable language skills, verbs at the end of sentences, illnesses, cancer, honesty, depression, blues, guilt, fear, despair. I wasn’t angry with her for telling me to shut up. I was trolling her, maybe. I just wanted her to share rock bottom with me and actually feel it and stop with any pre-arranged psychological milk toast and twaddle.
I wanted to know WHY
to painful stuff in my life, past, present, and future…
