Ode To My Therapist

Sometimes in order to believe in the power of something we have to experience it for ourselves.

Take therapy for example. You might ask as I did for many years how talking to a therapist for months or years and paying huge sums for the privilege can help solve our problems. The first time I asked this question was when I was a college student at UC Berkeley. I had a good friend who I’ll call Joe who I met after he dropped out of a PHD program at Harvard. He moved to California both to drink in the sun and really good coffee. He also wanted to figure himself out.

And to do this, he went to therapy several times a week. He needed to unravel the confusion that was blocking his future — confusion that centered on his relationship with his father. You see his father was an eminent historian at Harvard. And Joe had enrolled at Harvard with a goal of becoming a history professor just like his father. But he didn’t know if he really wanted to be a professor or if he wanted his father’s approval. And why go to this inordinate effort if really what he wanted deep down was for his father to validate him. I understood the question. But I couldn’t understand Joe’s desire to seek an answer through therapy. Couldn’t he just take long walks and ponder the problem until he found an answer? That’s what I did. Couldn’t he write in a journal or talk to friends? That’s what I did. I graduated and left the area not knowing if Joe found the answers he was looking for.

Fast forward to my life as a single, career gal in my mid-30’s living in New York City. Outwardly my life looked great. I was working at a TV network and earning enough to live comfortably. I had great friends and I owned a sweet one bedroom in Brooklyn. The problem was that I felt like a failure in my romantic relationships. I always felt tethered, trapped and unhappy. And I sensed my partners felt the same way.

I couldn’t have made the connection at the time — but my relationship dilemma resembled Joe’s dilemma in a key way. You see my father was also a brilliant academic. I tried hard as a girl to impress him as a way to increase his respect and love for me. And I was bringing this desire to impress men into my romantic relationships. I couldn’t see that the problem wasn’t in me. It was in my choice of partners.

Eventually I turned to a therapist for help. It wasn’t an accident that I chose a male therapist. My subconscious was looking out for me. My therapist modeled exactly the kind of behavior I needed. He listened to me intently and accepted what I said without criticism. He gave me the same feeling of safety and acceptance that I had felt with my mother as a child. It turns out I was practicing what therapists call transference. I was transferring the feeling of trust that I had with my mother to my therapist. And I felt accepted in return. One day my therapist said something that was a game changer. It was the AHA moment in my life. A moment that made me see myself and my relationships differently. He said instead of looking for men like your father, why don’t you look for men who are more like your mother? Huh? I should find a someone who’s a cross dresser?

No. Find a man who makes you feel the way you felt with your mother. And that was it. The shift happened in that moment. I pondered his words on the long subway ride back to Brooklyn and for many months after — until I did find such a man. The right man. And our relationship has endured for almost twenty years now. And so, I feel I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my therapist. And Joe, wherever you are I hope that you are also living a happier life, perhaps with the help of your long ago therapist.

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