“Therapy”

I had a dream last night where some wise beings were communicating with me, and saying that I have nearly been broken three times.  One was described, and one I can guess, but the third was when an attempt was made to heal me.

Ponder for a moment the tone in a therapists office.  In most cases there are strict prohibitions about hugging and touching.  There is a plan of abstraction, one born ultimately in the utterly fascistic and repressed Vienna of the 19th century.

You are supposed to talk about emotions, and feel them if you can, but always there is a distance between you and the therapist.  There is a tacit claim made that “this is how people interact”, with the further tacit claim that “this is a cold world, and you cannot expect to get too close to anyone”.

The entire therapeutic experience depends on money.  Run out of money or coverage, and your relationship with that therapist is at an end.  It is entirely contingent.  There is no loyalty, no true friendship even possible, since it is frowned on by the ethicists of the profession.  There are rules which state that distance must be maintained.

Ponder going into such a room desperate for love, for nurturing, for reassurance, for hope, for some giving spirit to demonstrate the world is not an intrinsically hostile place, and then ponder the immediate shock that “oh, this is a slow process.  Tell me why you think you are depressed, agitated, angry”.  Ponder the immediate shift that has to happen from the desperate need for a hug, and someone to say ‘its going to be OK.  I have your back.” to “tell me how that makes you feel.”

Many of us did not have the word love in our homes.  It was not a word we used in our home.  I was never told I was loved.  I was never hugged.  And when I was in my late teens, all I knew was that something was missing, but I didn’t have the faintest idea what it might be.  I had no way to compare happy homes with my own.  All I knew was that I was miserable.

So they direct you into this track where you read psychology.  You learn about intrafamilial dynamics.  You develop a shaded trust in the therapist, who is of course liable to disappear at any time, permanently.

What if you had centers where people singing and dancing, where they were happy, and were happy to share their happiness with everyone?  What if hugging were easy?  What if people were emotionally open?  Some cultures are like this today.  None of them has ever contemplated conquering the world.

My work continues, but I think I am getting much closer to where I need to be.