Patient Meeting
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Today, one of my patients spoke of attending a high school reunion. There someone recalled a meeting that had occurred during high school, a meeting my patient remembered very well. One girl, whose father was dying, talked about how apparent it was listing her father’s fatigue, loss of weight and pallor. It was at this moment, my patient realized that her father was also dying. Indeed, he had been dying for years from a degenerative disease and my patient had come to assume that he would simply continue to die forever. Now, to her shock, she realized her father's death was imminent. She broke down being unable to imagine life without him. Subsequently, she never wanted to talk about it and no one referred her to therapy. She kept her father’s dying a secret from all but her closest friends. My patient asked me, “Would I be less screwed up today if I had had therapy at that time.” Mind you my patient is a very successful CEO and president of a company. She was speaking of her inner life. I shared my thoughts with her. I felt if introduced to psychotherapy earlier that she might have been more open to herself sooner, developing greater self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-compassion during the years that had ensued, indeed perhaps arriving at the very place of self-care she found herself in now. She went on relating her thought that maybe she and the friends she gravitated to at that time shared a brokenness. I revealed my own thought, in no way original, that in some way we are all broken, that none of us escapes our early years unscathed. However, some people protected by denial and compartmentalization don't know they’re broken until much later in life when the doors of their compartmentalization are kicked down by the adversity that confronts most of us sooner or later in our lives. The great sadness is in the fact that what ails us goes unacknowledged, unrecognized and unaddressed (reconciled) by those around us, leaving the individual alone and isolated deep within themselves. The good news is that once aware of this state of affairs, each of us has a choice as to whether we want to remain that way. I think it may be true that it’s never too late to be happy, but each of us has to find some way to give it to ourselves.
Charles C. McCormack, MA, MSW, LCSW-C
Author: Hatching Charlie: A Psychotherapist’s Tale
And
Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance.
Today, one of my patients spoke of attending a high school reunion. There someone recalled a meeting that had occurred during high school, a meeting my patient remembered very well. One girl, whose father was dying, talked about how apparent it was listing her father’s fatigue, loss of weight and pallor. It was at this moment, my patient realized that her father was also dying. Indeed, he had been dying for years from a degenerative disease and my patient had come to assume that he would simply continue to die forever. Now, to her shock, she realized her father's death was imminent. She broke down being unable to imagine life without him. Subsequently, she never wanted to talk about it and no one referred her to therapy. She kept her father’s dying a secret from all but her closest friends. My patient asked me, “Would I be less screwed up today if I had had therapy at that time.” Mind you my patient is a very successful CEO and president of a company. She was speaking of her inner life. I shared my thoughts with her. I felt if introduced to psychotherapy earlier that she might have been more open to herself sooner, developing greater self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-compassion during the years that had ensued, indeed perhaps arriving at the very place of self-care she found herself in now. She went on relating her thought that maybe she and the friends she gravitated to at that time shared a brokenness. I revealed my own thought, in no way original, that in some way we are all broken, that none of us escapes our early years unscathed. However, some people protected by denial and compartmentalization don't know they’re broken until much later in life when the doors of their compartmentalization are kicked down by the adversity that confronts most of us sooner or later in our lives. The great sadness is in the fact that what ails us goes unacknowledged, unrecognized and unaddressed (reconciled) by those around us, leaving the individual alone and isolated deep within themselves. The good news is that once aware of this state of affairs, each of us has a choice as to whether we want to remain that way. I think it may be true that it’s never too late to be happy, but each of us has to find some way to give it to ourselves.
Charles C. McCormack, MA, MSW, LCSW-C
Author: Hatching Charlie: A Psychotherapist’s Tale
And
Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance.
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