The Choice

by Edith Eva Eger

  Because she had been referred to me by another psychologist—a dear friend of mine, the same person who had encouraged Beatrice to come hear me speak—I already knew some of Beatrice’s history. When did your childhood end? I often ask my patients. Beatrice’s childhood had ended almost as soon as it began. Her parents had been extremely neglectful of her and her siblings, sending them to school unwashed and unfed. The nuns at Beatrice’s school spoke sharply to her and blamed her for her unkempt appearance, scolding her to clean up and eat breakfast before she came to school. Beatrice internalized the message that her parents’ neglect was her fault.

  Then, when she was eight, one of her parents’ friends began molesting her. The molestations continued, though she tried to resist. She also tried to tell her parents what was happening, but they accused her of making it up. On her tenth birthday, her parents let their friend, who by then had been touching her inappropriately for two years, take her on a “date” to the movies. After the movie he took her to his home and raped her in the shower. When Beatrice began her treatment with me, at age thirty-five, the smell of popcorn still triggered flashbacks.

  At age eighteen Beatrice had married a recovering addict who was emotionally and physically cruel to her. She had escaped her family drama only to reenact it, reinforcing her belief that being loved meant being hurt. Beatrice was eventually able to divorce her husband and had been finding a way forward in her life, with a new career and a new relationship, when she was raped on a trip to Mexico. She came home devastated.

  At the insistence of her girlfriend, Beatrice began therapy with my colleague. She was ridden with anxiety and phobias and could hardly get out of bed. She felt a constant heavy, oppressive dread, and lived on high alert, afraid to leave her house for fear of being assaulted again, and afraid of the smells and associations that triggered debilitating flashbacks.

  In her first sessions with my colleague, Beatrice agreed to get up every morning, take a shower, make her bed, and then sit on a stationary bike in her living room for fifteen minutes with the TV on for comfort. Beatrice wasn’t in denial about her trauma, as I had once been. She had been able to talk about the past and to process it intellectually. But she hadn’t yet grieved for her interrupted life. Over time, on the exercise bike, Beatrice learned to sit with the emptiness, to trust that grief is not an illness (though it can feel like one), and understand that when we anesthetize our feelings, with eating or alcohol or other compulsive behaviors, we just prolong our suffering. At first, during the fifteen minutes a day on the exercise bike, Beatrice didn’t pedal. She just sat. A minute or two into her sit she would begin to cry. She cried until the timer rang. As the weeks passed, she spent a little longer on the bike—twenty minutes, then twenty-five. By the time she was sitting for thirty-minute stretches, she started to move the pedals. And little by little, day by day, she bicycled her way into her body’s caches of pain.

  By the time I met Beatrice, she had already done a tremendous amount of work in the service of her healing. Her grief work had diminished her depression and anxiety. She felt much better. But after hearing my speech at the community center event, she had wondered if there was more she could do to free herself from the pain of her trauma. The possibility of forgiveness had taken root.

  “Forgiveness isn’t you forgiving your molester for what he did to you,” I told her. “It’s you forgiving the part of yourself that was victimized and letting go of all blame. If you are willing, I can help guide you to your freedom. It will be like going over a bridge. It’s scary to look down below. But I’ll be right here with you. What do you think? Do you want to continue?”

  A dim light sparked in her brown eyes. She nodded her head.

  Several months after she began therapy with me, Beatrice was ready to take me mentally into her father’s study, where the molestations had occurred. This is an extremely vulnerable stage in the therapeutic process, and there is an ongoing debate in the psychology and neuroscience communities about how useful or harmful it is for a patient to mentally relive a traumatic situation, or physically return to a site of trauma. When I received my training, I learned to use hypnosis in order to help survivors reexperience the traumatic event in order to stop being hostage to it. In more recent years, studies have shown that putting someone mentally back in a traumatic experience can be dangerous—psychologically reliving a painful event can actually retraumatize a survivor. For example, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, it was discovered that the more times people saw the image of the towers going down on TV, the more trauma they had years later. Repeated encounters with a past event can reinforce rather than release the fearful and painful feelings. In my practice and in my own experience, I have seen the effectiveness of mentally reliving a traumatic episode, but it must be done with absolute safety, and with a well-trained professional who can give the patient control over how long and how deeply he or she stays in the past. Even then, it isn’t the best practice for all patients or all therapists.

  For Beatrice, it was essential to her healing. To free herself from her trauma, she needed permission to feel what she hadn’t been allowed to feel when the abuse was taking place, or in the three decades since. Until she could experience those feelings, they would scream for her attention, and the more she tried to suppress them, the more violently they would beg to be acknowledged, and the more terrifying they would be to confront. Over many weeks, I guided Beatrice gently, slowly, to get closer to those feelings. Not to be swallowed by them. To see they are just feelings.

  As Beatrice had learned from doing the grief work, finally allowing herself to feel her immense sorrow had given her some relief from the depression, stress, and fear that had imprisoned her in her bed. But she hadn’t yet allowed herself to feel her anger about the past. There is no forgiveness without rage.

  As Beatrice described the small room, the way the door squeaked when her father’s friend closed it, the dark plaid curtains he would make her draw shut, I watched her body language, ready to bring her back to shore if she was in distress.

  Beatrice stiffened as she mentally closed the curtains in her father’s study. As she sealed herself in the room with her attacker.

  “Stop there, honey,” I said.

  She sighed. She kept her eyes closed.

  “Is there a chair in the room?”

  She nodded.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s an armchair. Rust colored.”

  “I want you to put your father in that chair.”

  She grimaced.

  “Can you see him sitting there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “He has his glasses on. He’s reading a newspaper.”

  “What is he wearing?”

  “A blue sweater. Gray pants.”

  “I’m going to give you a big piece of duct tape, and I want you to put it over his mouth.”

  “What?”

  “Cover his mouth with this tape. Did you do it?”

  She nodded. She gave a faint smile.

  “Now here’s a rope. Tie him to that chair so he can’t get up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you tie it tight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I want you to yell at him.”

  “Yell how?”

  “I want you to tell him how angry you are.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say, ‘Dad, I’m so angry at you for not protecting me!’ But don’t say it. Yell it!” I demonstrated.

  “Dad, I’m so angry at you,” she said.

  “Louder.”

  “Dad, I’m so angry at you!”

  “Now I want you to punch him.”

  “Where?”

  “Right in the face.”

  She raised a fist and swatted the air.

  “Punch him again.”

  She did it.

  “Now kick.”

  Her foot flew up.

>   “Here’s a pillow. You can punch this. Really whack it.” I handed her a cushion.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the pillow. Her punches were timid at first, but the more I encouraged her, the stronger they became. I invited her to stand up and kick the pillow if she wanted to. To throw it across the room. To scream at the top of her lungs. Soon she was down on the floor, pounding on the pillow with her fists. When her body began to fatigue, she stopped punching and collapsed on the floor, breathing fast.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her.

  “Like I don’t ever want to stop.”

  The following week I brought in a punching bag, a red one on a heavy black stand. We established a new ritual—we’d begin our sessions with some rage release. She’d mentally tie someone up in a chair—usually one of her parents—and scream while delivering a savage beating: How could you let that happen to me? I was just a little girl!

  “Are you done?” I’d ask.

  “No.”

  And she would keep punching until she was.

  That Thanksgiving, after returning home from a dinner with friends, Beatrice was sitting on the couch, petting her dog, when her whole body started tingling. Her throat dried up, her heart began palpitating. She tried deep breathing to get her body to relax, but the symptoms got worse. She thought she was dying. She begged her girlfriend to take her to the hospital. The doctor who examined her in the emergency room said nothing was medically wrong. She had suffered a panic attack. When Beatrice saw me after the episode, she was frustrated and scared, discouraged to be feeling worse instead of better, and worried that she would have another panic attack.

  I did everything I could to applaud her progress, to validate her growth. I told her that in my experience, when you release rage, you often feel much worse before you begin to feel better.

  She shook her head. “I think I’ve gone as far as I can go.”

  “Honey, give yourself some credit. You had a terrifying night. And you got through it without harming yourself. Without running away. I don’t think I could have coped as well as you did.”

  “Why do you keep trying to convince me that I’m a strong person? Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m sick and I’ll always be sick. Maybe it’s time to stop telling me I’m someone I won’t ever be.”

  “You’re holding yourself responsible for something that isn’t your fault.”

  “What if it is my fault? What if there’s something different I could have done, and he would have left me in peace?”

  “What if blaming yourself is just a way of maintaining the fantasy that the world is in your control?”

  Beatrice rocked on the couch, her face streaked in tears.

  “You didn’t have choices then. You have choices now. You can choose not to come back here. That is always your choice. But I hope you can learn to see what a remarkable survivor you are.”

  “I’m barely holding on to my life. That doesn’t seem very remarkable to me.”

  “Was there ever a place you went, when you were a girl, where you felt safe?”

  “I only felt safe when I was alone in my room.”

  “Would you sit on your bed? Or by the window?”

  “On my bed.”

  “Did you have any toys or stuffed animals you’d play with?”

  “I had a doll.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you close your eyes and sit on that safe bed now? Hold your doll. Talk to her now like you talked to her then. What would you say?”

  “How can I be loved in this family? I need to be good, but I’m bad.”

  “Do you know all that time you spent alone as a child, feeling so sad and isolated, you were building a huge store of strength and resilience? Can you applaud that little girl now? Can you take her in your arms? Tell her, ‘You were hurt, and I love you. You were hurt, and you’re safe now. You had to pretend and hide. I see you now. I love you now.’ ”

  Beatrice held herself tightly and shook with sobs. “I want to be able to protect her now. I couldn’t then. But I don’t think I will ever feel safe unless I can protect myself now.”

  This is how Beatrice decided to take her next risk. Beatrice acknowledged that she wanted to feel safe, that she wanted to be able to protect herself. She had learned about a women’s self-defense class beginning soon at the nearby community center. But she delayed registering. She feared she might not be up to the challenge of fighting off an attack, that a physical confrontation, even in the safe and empowering environment of a self-defense class, might trigger a panic attack. She came up with all kinds of reasons not to pursue what she wanted, in an effort to manage her fear—the class might be too expensive, or it might already be full, or it might not have enough participants and might be canceled. With me, she began to work through the fears underlying her resistance to pursuing what she wanted. I asked her two questions: What’s the worst that can happen? and Can you survive it? The worst scenario she could imagine was experiencing a panic attack in class, in a room full of strangers. We confirmed that the medical release form she would be asked to fill out when she registered for the class would give the staff the information they needed to support her in the event of an attack. And we discussed the fact that she had experienced a panic attack before. If it happened again, she might not be able to stop it or control it, but at least she would know what was going on. And she already knew from experience that a panic attack, though frightening and unpleasant, wasn’t deadly. She could survive it. So Beatrice registered for the class.

  But once she was there in the room, in her sweatpants and sneakers, surrounded by the other women, she lost her nerve. She felt too self-conscious to participate. She was afraid of making mistakes, afraid of calling attention to herself. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave after getting so close to her goal. She leaned against the wall and watched the class. She returned for each session after that, dressed to participate, but still too afraid. One day the instructor noticed her watching from the sidelines and offered to coach her one-on-one after class. Afterward, she came to see me, her face triumphant. “I could throw him against the wall today!” she said. “I pinned him. I picked him up. I threw him against the wall!” Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes glistened with pride.

  Once she had the confidence that she could protect herself, she began taking other risks—adult ballet classes, belly dancing. Her body began to change. It was no longer a container for her fear. It was an instrument of joy. Beatrice became a writer, a ballet teacher, a yoga instructor. She decided to choreograph a dance based on a Brothers Grimm tale she remembered reading as a child, “The Girl Without Hands.” In the story, a girl’s parents are tricked into giving their daughter to the devil. Because she is innocent and pure, the devil can’t possess her, but in revenge and frustration, he cuts off her hands. The girl wanders the world, with stumps where her hands used to be. One day she walks into a king’s garden, and when he sees her standing among the flowers, he falls in love with her. They get married and he makes her a pair of silver hands. They have a son. One day she saves their young son from drowning. Her silver hands disappear and are replaced with real hands.

  Beatrice held out her hands as she told me about this story from her childhood. “My hands are real again,” she said. “It wasn’t someone else I saved. It was me.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Somehow the Waters Part

  Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.

  Two days before his sixteenth birthday, Renée’s son Jeremy came into the den where she and her husband were watching the ten o’clock news. In the flickering lights from the TV, his dark face looked troubled. Renée was about to reach for her son, wrap him up in the cuddly kind of hug that he would still consent to on occasion, when the phone rang. It was her sister in Chic
ago, who was going through a bad divorce and often called late at night. “I’ve got to take this,” Renée said. She gave her son’s cheek a quick pat and turned her attention to her distressed sister. Jeremy muttered a good night and headed toward the stairs. “Sweet dreams, baby,” she called to his retreating back.

  The next morning, Jeremy wasn’t up by the time she was putting breakfast on the table. She called up the stairs to her son but got no response. She buttered the last piece of toast and went up to knock on his bedroom door. Still he didn’t answer. Exasperated, she opened his door. The room was dark, the blinds still closed. She called to him again, confused to find that his bed was already made. A sixth sense drove her toward the closet door. She opened it, a gust of cold dread at her back. Jeremy’s body hung from the wooden rod, a belt around his neck.

  On his desk she found a note: It’s not you, it’s me. Sorry to disappoint you. —J

  When Renée and her husband, Greg, first came to see me, Jeremy had been dead for only a few weeks. The loss of him was so fresh that they weren’t grieving yet. They were in shock. The person they had buried wasn’t gone to them. It felt as though they had put him in the ground alive.

  During those early visits, Renée sat and sobbed. “I want to turn back the clock!” she cried. “I want to go back, go back.” Greg cried too, but quietly. Often he would look out the window while Renée wept. I told them that men and women often grieve differently, and that the death of a child could be a rift or an opportunity in their marriage. I urged them to take good care of themselves, to let themselves rage and weep, to kick and cry and scream and get the feelings out so that they didn’t make Jeremy’s sister, Jasmine, pick up the tab for their grief. I invited them to bring in pictures of Jeremy so that we could celebrate his sixteen years of life, the sixteen years his spirit had resided with them. I gave them resources on support groups for survivors of suicide. And I worked with them as the what-if questions rose up like a tidal wave. What if I’d been paying more attention? What if I hadn’t answered the phone that night, if I’d given him that huge hug? What if I’d worked less and been at home more? What if I hadn’t believed the myth that white kids are the only ones who commit suicide? What if I’d been on the lookout for signs? What if I’d put less pressure on him to perform in school? What if I’d checked in on him before I went to bed? All the what-ifs reverberated, an unanswerable echo: Why?