Down the rabbit hole

“For a person to build a rich and rewarding life for himself, there are certain qualities and bits of knowledge that he needs to acquire. There are also things, harmful attitudes, superstitions, and emotions that he needs to chip away. A person needs to chip away everything that doesn't look like the person he or she most wants to become.”

Earl Nightingale

So today I got a call I from the lady I have been seeing telling me it was over. This did not surprise me. Once again, I have pushed someone away that I was close to, and I went this afternoon and drowned my sorrows in the nearest bar.

This is a serious violation of ethics. Especially when you continue to see patients which I did. Two days ago I quit therapy. I am cracking up.

Going home after a long night of drinking I thought about the implications of what I had done. The seriousness of this professionally is a major concern, but selfishly, I am also worried about myself. Where the hell am I going and why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over again? Am I a prison to my own negative patterns? Am I caught in a matrix of self-replicating defeat?

I take a long look into the mirror and see the scars of what I have done. Although my skin is pretty clear, what I see beneath the surface is a man with secrets full of guilt and shame. I know this is not entirely rationale. I have after all confessed my secrets. I have laid myself bare, screamed, cried, and emerged stronger for the experience.

Or have I? Perhaps there is still more I haven’t explored. Or perhaps I am simply defective packaging, damaged beyond repair. Even as I write this I recognize this kind of self-talk as the hallmark of depression, but yet it is a question I still need answered.

What happens to me in relationships? Why do I allow my defensive emotions to highjack my personality, and why do I always hurt people so much? I am a helper, and on my best day even a healer, yet I continue to sabotage my own happiness.

I wake up with one of the most piercing hangovers I have ever experienced. Alcohol has cleared my body over the last few weeks, and this morning it has returned with an awful vengeance. I am absolutely overwhelmed with an urge to crawl out of my own skin. I know this feeling well. I crave the wellness I had been recently feeling. How the hell did I wind up back here again?

I go to work with the familiar sagging eyes and rumpled clothing which have been my trademark for so long. My first patient discusses her intense feelings of loneliness, and as she is talking I begin to cry. Seeing me cry moves her to tears and soon the two of us are plumbing the depths of our intense feelings of grief. She believes my tears are out of sympathy, and in many ways they are.

Is this ethical????? To totally break down in front of a patient? I don’t know, but what I do know is that in that moment we are truly fellow travelers, both utterly lost on our short journeys on this earth.

Eventually the session ends, and on the way out my patient gives me a huge hug, telling me this is “the best session she has ever had.” I am moved, and I am guilty, as my tears were as much about me as they were about her. Still there was a powerful lesson here. I had met her emotionally and truly felt what it is she was feeling. This is the essence of the corrective emotional experience. The lesson is powerful. It reminds me that people are not healed by words. Not very often. True healing comes from sharing emotions. This is what happened today for her and for me. We began to heal each other.