the sky is falling

About three weeks ago after a productive session, I had the weirdest dream that I was having an affair with my father. It was disturbing enough to wake me up out of a deep sleep. It took me about thirty seconds to swim toward consciousness and in those murky moments I understood that the dream was not just about my father.

I was attracted to my therapist.

I believe the first word out of my mouth that day was “shit!!!”. As far as I was concerned the sky was falling. I had been making progress. Real verifiable progress. I was no longer panicking at the drop of a hat. I was starting to be gentle on myself and was even re-entertaining ideas of going back to pursue my life’s dream of acting. This seemed like about the worst thing that could happen to me at this point in time. I knew that I had to fight and fight hard. There was only one thing to do. I googled.

I googled until my fingers started to go numb. I googled transference. I googled ego-supportive therapy. I googled transference and ego-supportive therapy. In one fit of punitive self-diagnosis I googled borderline personality disorder and then cried for 45 minutes convinced that I had finally lost my mind.

The following week went as follows. Almost got hit by a car twice. Got drunk on tequila for three days overslept and left the car parked in front of the school where I got a $55 parking ticket and blocked the buses from being able to pull into the school and let the kids out. Then I tried to drunk dial my biological father and scream at him on the phone for abandoning me and fucking me up so bad that I would be such a crazy stalker person (No I hadn’t ever actually stalked anybody, but at the time that just seemed like semantics). Fortunately for both of us I could not find his number in any of the search engines I used ( I think it may be possible that he’s dead). I cried some more.


My session the following week felt rather similar to what I believe it must be like for someone who enters a lion cage weaponless, perhaps with a raw t-bone tied to their chest for good measure. I don’t believe I was actually shaking. I think it was more like the response that baby deer has when faced with some terrifying thing. I was frozen. My mind still worked. I was able to speak and convey things, but any other movement was out of my power.

I could draw you a very detailed picture of the shoes that my therapist wore that day. His freakishly small feet are the only thing I remember seeing. They were black loafers by the way. Really unstylish ones. Of course I see how ridiculous it is for me to be so petrified by a soft spoken man with tiny feet and questionable fashion sense, but reason does not come into such things I am learning.

I stared at his feet and told him about my dream and then summed it up with my interpretation that “last week’s session must have been a good one and therefore my subconscious sent the dream as some sort of resistance” I was fairly impressed with this analysis. Jim’s response was

“Mhmn. Perhaps I can offer an alternative interpretation”

A moment . I give a teeny nod. He proceeded on one of his convoluted verbal pilgrimages that embark from point A on their way to point Z taking a minor detour through Albuquerque. He finally landed at his point “You have a crush on your therapist”.

Later, when discussing the situation with one of my closest girlfriends I would be impressed with the fact that he had come to this conclusion, especially considering that my dream had not included any Jimminess and I had not included in my narrative the fact that I had awakened to this very point myself. At the time I took it as a matter of course that he had “gotten it” and simply continued on with my session, which was telling him about my train wreck of a week and my research into transference and how it is handled in ego-supportive therapy.

Two sessions later he referred to the fact that I was able to make those connections as “brilliant”. My ego was quite stroked by this until I reminded myself that in order to raise my self-esteem and create a strengthened relationship Jim would probably tell me that the sky is green. OK. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it does bring me to my first major point which is:

1. My “crush” must be an erotic transference simply because I have very little knowledge of this man’s likes, dislikes, interests and more annoying qualities. The things he chooses to share with me he does so in an effort to build and maintain a therapeutic alliance. This does not necessarily mean that the things he says are lies, only that they are minute bits of himself chosen carefully to highlight the similarities between us and therefore to put me at my ease and help me to ease up on myself in seeing that someone whose competence I trust is like me in some ways. What this means is that if I have developed a crush on anyone it is really myself. Creepy, No?

Point number two is related to the afore mentioned ego-stroking.

2. This particular therapy is called “ego-supportive” for a reason. Instead of being totally myself in my sessions I’ve been running this useless “I want you to think I’m a real smarty pants” agenda. Like I might get an award for “Best patient ever”. There’s no medal. Not even a cookie. There’s just getting better or staying the same.

Surprisingly these realizations in themselves have not been enough to “fix” me. Yet another example of how knowing things intellectually and understanding them viscerally are two different things. If given the choice I’d go with animal understanding every time, thank you very much.