Now we were both dancing and singing out loud together—about the light that shines in the cloudy night—belting out the verses at the top of our lungs as if we were at a karaoke bar, dancing exuberantly in the same room in which I’d fallen apart in despair.
There will be an answer, let it be
The music ended sooner than I’d expected, just as our sessions sometimes did. But rather than feeling like I needed more time, I found something satisfying about our time being up.
Not long before this, I’d told Wendell that I’d begun thinking about what it would be like to stop coming to therapy. So much had changed over the course of the year, and I was feeling not just better equipped to handle life’s challenges and uncertainties but also more peaceful inside. Wendell had smiled—it was the smile I’d seen recently that seemed to mean I’m delighted for you—then asked if we should talk about termination.
I wavered. Not yet.
Now, though, as Wendell placed his iPhone back in his drawer and returned to his spot on the couch, the time seemed right. There’s a biblical saying that translates roughly as “First you will do, then you will understand.” Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It’s one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It’s another to stop being so restrictive. The transfer of words into action, the freedom of it, made me want to carry that action outside the therapy room and into my life.
And with that, I was ready to set a date to leave.
58
A Pause in the Conversation
The strangest thing about therapy is that it’s structured around an ending. It begins with the knowledge that our time together is finite, and the successful outcome is that patients reach their goals and leave. The goals are different for each person, and therapists talk to their patients about what those goals are. Experiencing less anxiety? Relationships going more smoothly? Being kinder to yourself? The endpoint depends on the patient.
In the best case, the ending feels organic. There might be more to do, but we’ve done a lot, enough. The patient feels good—more resilient, more flexible, more able to navigate daily life. We’ve helped them hear the questions they didn’t even know they were asking: Who am I? What do I want? What’s in my way?
It seems silly, though, to deny that therapy is also about forming deep attachments to people and then saying goodbye.
Sometimes therapists find out what happens afterward, if patients come back at a later point in their lives. Other times we’re left to wonder. How are they doing? Is Austin thriving after leaving his wife and coming out as a gay man in his late thirties? Is Janet’s husband with Alzheimer’s still alive? Did Stephanie stay in her marriage? There are so many stories left unfinished, so many people I think about but will never see again.
“Will you remember me?” Julie had asked, but the question wasn’t unique to her situation.
And today I’m saying goodbye to Wendell. We’ve been talking about this goodbye for weeks, but now that it’s here, I don’t know how to thank him. As an intern, I was taught that when patients thank us, it helps to remind them that they did the hard work.
It’s all you, we tend to say. I was just here to guide you. And in a sense, that’s true. The fact that they picked up the phone and decided to come to therapy and then work through things every week is something no one else could do for them.
But we’re also taught something else that we can’t really understand until we’ve done thousands of hours of sessions: We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person’s voice saying, I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another. In therapy we say, Let’s edit your story.
Early on, when I was talking about Boyfriend, in my view an open-and-shut case of I’m-the-innocent-injured-party-here, Wendell said, “You want me to agree with you.” I said that I didn’t want him to agree with me (though I did!), I just wanted him to be sensitive to the shock I was experiencing, and then I proceeded to tell him exactly how I wanted him to do that. At that point he said that I was trying to “control the therapy” and that my attempts to bend situations to my liking might have played a part in my being blindsided by Boyfriend. Wendell didn’t want to do therapy the way I wanted him to. Boyfriend didn’t want to live in contented domesticity the way I wanted him to. Boyfriend tried to accommodate me until he couldn’t anymore. Wendell wouldn’t waste my time that way, he explained; he didn’t want to say two years in, like Boyfriend did, Sorry, I can’t do this.
I remember how I both loved and hated Wendell for saying that. It’s like when somebody finally has the guts to tell you that you have a problem and you feel both defensive and relieved that this person is telling it like it is. That’s the delicate work that therapists do. Wendell and I worked on my grief but also my self-imprisonment. And we did it together—it wasn’t all me. Therapy can only work if it’s a joint endeavor.
Nobody is going to save you, Wendell had said. Wendell didn’t save me, but he did help me to save myself.
So when I express my gratitude to Wendell, he doesn’t push away the compliment with a trite line of humility.
He says, “It’s been my pleasure.”
Recently John observed that a good television series leaves viewers feeling like the time between weekly episodes is simply a pause in the story. Similarly, he said, he began to realize that each of our sessions wasn’t a discrete conversation but a continuing one and that the time between sessions was just a pause, not a period. I share this with Wendell as the minutes wind down in our final session. “Let’s consider this a pause in the conversation,” I say. “Like every week, but longer.”
I tell him I may come back one day, because it’s true; people leave and come back at different times in their lives. And when they do, the therapist is still there, sitting in the same chair, holding all of their shared history.
“We can still consider it a pause,” Wendell replies, then adds the part that’s hardest to say. “Even if we don’t meet again.”
I smile, knowing exactly what he means. Relationships in life don’t really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you’ve been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep.
In the weeks leading up to this session, I’ve been having dreams about my leaving. In one, I imagine seeing Wendell at a conference. He’s standing with somebody I don’t know and I’m not sure if he’s seen me. I feel a yawning distance between us and all that once lived between us. And then it happens: He looks over. I nod. He nods. There’s a hint of a smile that only I can see.
In another dream, I’m visiting a friend at her therapy office—who this friend is isn’t clear—and as I exit the elevator on her floor, I see Wendell leaving the suite. I wonder if he’s there to meet with colleagues for a consultation group. Or maybe he has just left his own therapy session. I’m fascinated; Wendell’s therapist! Is one of these therapists Wendell’s? Is my friend Wendell’s therapist? Either way, he’s not self-conscious about it. “Hi,” he says warmly on his way out. “Hi,” I say on my way in.
I wonder what these dreams mean. I’m always embarrassed as a therapist when I can’t understand my own dreams. I bring them to Wendell. He doesn’t know what they mean either. We come up with theories, two therapists analyzing one therapist’s dreams. We talk about how I felt during the dreams. We talk about how I feel now—both anxious and excited to move on. We talk about how hard it can be to get attached and say goodbye.
“Okay,” I say now in Wendell’s office. “A pause.”
We have about a minute left, and I try to take in the moment, me
morize it. Wendell with his crossed and impossibly long legs, his stylish button-down and khakis, and today’s trendy blue lace-ups over socks with patterned squares. His face—curious, compassionate, present. His beard with the flecks of gray. The table with the tissues between us. The armoire, the bookshelf, and the desk that always has his laptop on it and nothing else.
Wendell pats his legs twice and stands but doesn’t say his usual “See you next week” at the door.
“Bye,” I say.
“Bye,” he says and he reaches his hand out to shake mine.
When I release his hand, I turn and walk through the waiting room with the funky chairs and black-and-white photos and humming noise machine, then head down the corridor toward the building’s exit. As I approach the main door, a woman enters from the street. She’s holding her phone to her ear with one hand, pulling the door open with the other.
“I have to go. Can I call you in an hour?” she says into her phone. I hang back, watching her move down the hall. Sure enough, she opens the door to Wendell’s office. I wonder what they’ll talk about. I wonder if they’ll ever dance.
I think about our conversation, wondering how the pause will hold.
Once outside, I quicken my step as I head to my car. I have patients to see at the office, people like me, all of us trying our best to get out of our own ways. The light on the corner is about to change so I run to catch it, but then I notice the warmth on my skin and I stop at the curb, tilting my face to the sun, soaking it in, lifting my eyes to the world.
Actually, I’ve got plenty of time.
Acknowledgments
There’s a reason I ask patients early on how their lives are peopled—if I’ve said it a million times, I’ll say it a million and one: we grow in connection with others. It turns out that books grow in the same way. I am so grateful to the following people:
First and foremost, my patients are the reason I do what I do and my admiration for them is endless. Each week, they push themselves harder than Olympic athletes, and it’s a privilege to be a part of that process. I hope that I’ve done justice to their stories, and honored their lives in these pages. They teach me so much.
Wendell—thank you for seeing my neshama, even (and especially) when I couldn’t. It’s an understatement to say that I feel so lucky to have landed in your office when I did.
Therapy is so many things, including a craft that’s honed over the years. I’ve had the great fortune to learn from the best. Harold Young, Astrid Schwartz, Lorraine Rose, Lori Karny, and Richard Dunn helped me from the very beginning. Lori Grapes has been a wise mentor and generous supporter, always making herself available for a quick consult between sessions. My consultation group has provided the most supportive place to do the hard work of examining myself as well as my patients.
Gail Ross made this entire thing possible, launching me into the capable hands of Lauren Wein, a serendipitous match for many reasons, just one of which is that she also happens to be the daughter-in-law of a therapist, so she understood exactly what I was trying to do in these pages. Her “in conversation with” comment was the inspiration that made it all click and, in innumerable ways, she has guided this project with an enthusiasm that authors only dream of. Bruce Nichols and Ellen Archer have been wonderfully encouraging and hands-on from up on high, and have supported and championed this project literally every step of the way. Pilar Garcia-Brown was a wizard behind the scenes; I wish I were half as capable and efficient at making things happen as she is. When it came time to work with the rest of the HMH team, I couldn’t believe how much talent there was under one roof. My immense gratitude goes to Lori Glazer, Maire Gorman, Taryn Roeder, Leila Meglio, Liz Anderson, Hannah Harlow, Lisa Glover, Debbie Engel, and Loren Isenberg. Their brilliance and creativity astound me. Martha Kennedy (thank you for the gorgeous cover design) and Arthur Mount (thank you for the office illustrations) made the book look beautiful, inside and out.
Tracy Roe, MD, wasn’t just an exacting copyeditor who saved me (and my readers) from countless grammatical disasters. We also discovered many parallel experiences, and her hilarious comments in the margins made this process a delight (for me; my lax pronoun use might have driven her right back to her patients in the ER). Dara Kaye helped navigate the maze of international paperwork for our foreign editions, and here in Los Angeles, Olivia Blaustein’s and Michelle Weiner’s expert care at CAA has been icing on the cake.
When Scott Stossel first told me about Alice Truax, he used the word “legendary,” and he was right. Her clarity, guidance, and wisdom were indeed legendary. She saw connections between my life and my patients’ lives that even I hadn’t; answered emails at all hours of the night; and like a good therapist, asked discerning questions, pushed me to go deeper, and encouraged me to reveal myself more fully than I ever intended. Alice is, quite simply, all over this book.
Back when my first draft was an obscene 600 pages, a small army of very honest and very generous souls volunteered to offer feedback. Each of one of them helped to improve the book dramatically, and if I had the ability to hand out good karma for life, I’d give it to them: Kelli Auerbach, Carolyn Carlson, Amanda Fortini, Sarah Hepola, David Hochman, Judith Newman, Brett Paesel, Kate Phillips, David Rensin, Bethany Saltman, Kyle Smith, and Miven Trageser.
Anat Baron, Amy Bloom, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Meghan Daum, Rachel Kauder-Nalebuff, Barry Nalebuff, Peggy Orenstein, Faith Salie, Joel Stein, and Heather Turgeon all provided moral and practical support and/or hilarious title ideas (There’s Dust Under That Couch; My Couch, or Yours?). Taffy also launched her truth bombs my way when I needed them most. The savvy Jim Levine encouraged me at a key moment, and his support meant the world. Emily Perl Kingsley offered her gracious blessing when I asked to reprint her beautiful essay “Welcome to Holland” in these pages. Carolyn Bronstein listened . . . and listened . . . and listened.
When you’re writing a book, it takes a long time before you have the privilege of connecting with readers, but when you write a weekly column, your readers are right there with you. Huge thanks to my “Dear Therapist” readers, and to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Scott Stossel, Kate Julian, Adrienne LaFrance, and Becca Rosen for giving me the opportunity and trusting me to have candid conversations with the brave readers who write in for that candor. Thanks to Joe Pinsker, a dream editor in every way, for making sure that what I write makes sense and sounds so much better. It’s always a joy to work with all of you.
My greatest thanks go to my family. Wendell only had to see me once a week; you have to see me all the time. Your love, support, and understanding are everything. Extra special thanks to the “whole package,” Zach, for adding daily magic to all of our lives, and for your helpful thoughts on what to say in my advice column and what to title my book. It’s not easy having a mom who’s a therapist, and it’s not easy having a mom who’s a writer. You got a double dose, ZJ, and have handled it all with astonishing grace. You give meaning to the word meaning, and, as always, I love you “infinity to the infinity power.”
About the Author
Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times best-selling author who writes the weekly Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic, where she is also a contributing editor. She has written for the New York Times Magazine and has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR. She lives in Los Angeles.
Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com
or by following her @LoriGottlieb1 on Twitter
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