Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

A twenty-year-old patient, Holly, shares a dream she calls “her ‘poetic-justice dream’” (252), about pretending not to recognize in adulthood the girl who used to ignore her in school because of her looks. This reminds Lori of Jungian and Freudian interpretation of dreams (Jung interpreted them on the subject level—“how they relate to common themes in our collective unconscious”, and Freud on the objective level—“how the content of the dream related to the dreamer in real life (252)).

We dream most frequently of our fears, which come in many shapes, and we often find it hard to admit those fears to ourselves; dreams tend to take the form of a pre-confession. Lori shares her own dream, inspired by Holly’s, in which she meets Boyfriend in a mall, buying a present for his new girlfriend. She is relieved when she hears the girlfriend is 50 years old, until she sees herself in the mirror and realizes she is in her eighties in the dream. Boyfriend asks her if she has completed “the book about your death” (255). 

Lori reveals that she has been lying about everything being fine before the breakup. She has a publishing contract for a book about “how we were trying too hard to make ourselves happy” (265), but she has been procrastinating, “filled with panic, dread, regret, and shame” (259). She relates how she once wrote a popular article about parents ruining their children lives by trying to make them feel happy all the time, and instead of accepting a financially lucrative offer to expand it into a book, she refused and decided to focus on the other project, which she never really started. 

She finds it hard to transform the subtleties of therapy into a useful book on happiness, even though scientists have even come up with a mathematical equation to predict happiness, “which all boils down to: Happiness equals reality minus expectations” (265). She found herself torn between wanting to do something meaningful, and wanting to provide for her family. Her relationship served as a welcome distraction from her crucial dilemma.

John requests from Lori that they have a Skype session, which she is loath to do, but acquiesces after he says it is urgent. He is in the studio and people repeatedly interrupt him while he complains about his wife, Margo; she is seeing a therapist, who is brainwashing her. Lori realizes Margo is coming to terms with John’s emotional unavailability and is trying to communicate this to him. As is often the case in family dynamics, when one member changes, the others are at a loss as to how to keep the status quo they need, “If John’s wife becomes less depressed, how can John keep his role as the sane one in the couple?” (275).

To her dismay, Lori realizes that Margo is seeing Wendell, and she is both jealous and confused about a potential conflict of interest. John wants her to contact Wendell and speak for him, which she refuses, but she wonders if she should tell her therapist about the coincidence. John admits he too misses the way things were with his wife and then abruptly ends the session. Lori tries to get advice from colleagues, but they are equally unsure how best to proceed.  

Lori finally confesses to Wendell about her unwritten book. He surprises her by starting to sing about her self-pity that half her life is over, and emphasizes that no one is going to swoop in and save her from herself. He tells her about a cartoon of a man who is behind bars in a prison that has no other walls, yet he still shakes the bars in frustration. Lori imagines herself in the same situation and chooses to leave the false prison within her mind, knowing that it will require much work to do it in real life, “imprisoned by our thoughts, behaviors, marriages, jobs, fears, or past” (302). Wendell asks her if she is ready to talk about her “fight with death” (305), which reminds Lori of her dream, and disturbs something deep inside of her. His question is timely.

On a Saturday morning, Lori is with her son at Trader Joe’s buying breakfast when she notices her patient Julie is working the cash register. Since her illness, Julie has been enjoying the freedom of making choices regardless of potential consequences. One of her wishes was to take a break from her academic career and work at Trader Joe’s, which both Lori and Julie’s husband Matt found too radical. Lori now wonders if her reaction was envy at Julie’s new strength to follow her wishes: “Therapists tell their patients: Follow your envy—it shows you what you want” (312). As she observes how well Julie is doing, Lori is unsure whether she should make her presence known, but her son takes the decision out of her hands. After they leave the shop, Lori notices Julie has written on her credit card receipt that she is pregnant.

Lori presents the case of her 69-year-old patient, Rita, who is depressed after several failures, in almost every aspect of her life. She has given herself a year to find meaning in her life, or she will commit suicide. Rita has had three failed marriages, and four troubled children with whom she is not in touch. She feels lonely and craves human touch. Even though she has tried dating apps, the old male body disgusts her. Her life is empty of meaning and she lack vitality—her movements show psychomotor retardation—“slowing down of coordinated efforts between the brain and the body” (327). When Lori asks her to relate her day, Rita reveals she never does much and she has no contact with other people. Lori is not sure she can help Rita, and does not know how to proceed: Whether she should bring an older person into the depths of psychotherapy.

Rita’s first husband was an alcoholic abuser, her second a widower who still loved his dead wife, and third a cheater. Now she has been alone for over a decade. She tells Lori of a family living next door, with a stay-at-home father and a working mom who all care deeply for each other. Rita spies on them and seethes with anger that she never got to have the same experience. Lori reflects that she has been lucky with two most significant choices in her own life: Having a baby, and becoming a therapist.