One of the hard parts of psychotherapy – and the unavoidable realities – is remorse. Inevitably, once you become more aware of who you are, and how you’re living your life…you wish you’d done so sooner.
Patients are always telling me they’re kicking themselves for not getting to my office (or at least someone’s office) years before.
One patient this week wept as he reviewed all the relationships he’d wrecked over the years by behaving exactly like his father, suspicious and controlling, exhausting the women he dated until they finally left in frustration.
“All those wasted years,” he sighed. “All those wasted opportunities for happiness.”
There isn’t much I can say to that, except that’s how awareness works – when it arrives, you always wish it made the trip a little quicker.
Then I remember what Gerald Lucas, a psychotherapist and institute director, used to say at times like that:
“What a fool I was at 80, said the 90 year old man.”
There’s no such thing as perfect wisdom. Lena Fugeri, another psychotherapist I used to work with, used to say you never finish with psychotherapy because as soon as awareness arrives, life throws you new challenges.
Lena was right. My patients in their teens are struggling with their first relationships and finding meaningful careers. My patients in their 40’s and 50’s might be dealing with raising children, navigating a marriage with a partner, learning to manage others on the job, or the death of their parents. And my patients in their 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and 90’s are handling growing older and the entirely new set of issues triggered by that process.
You are like a lotus flower – the more you peel the petals away, the more petals you find within. There is no center – only more layers to peel away, new hidden wonders.
Instead of beating yourself up for not achieving awareness sooner, it makes sense to emulate one of my favorite figures from Buddhism – the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
The Bodhisattvas, in Buddhism, are followers of the Buddha who achieve sufficient wisdom to attain enlightenment, the state of nirvana.
The Bodhisattva of Compassion, alone, chooses to remain behind in the world, to assist mankind on its journey to awareness.
In one famous story, three monks wander the parched desert until they reach a walled garden. They hear the tantalizing splash of water within.
The first monk climbs on the shoulders of the others, and leaps into the garden, disappearing.
The second monk laboriously scales the wall and is also soon hidden amid the plants and trees.
The third monk clambers up all alone and perches himself atop the wall, studying the lush garden and cool, clear spring.
Then he slides back down, and returns to wander the arid waste.
This monk’s job is to search for other lost souls. He shows them how to locate the garden.
This is the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
You might be wiser now than you used to be. I hope psychotherapy helped you acquire some of that insight.
But please don’t forget – part of wisdom is passing on what you’ve learned to others.
Don’t sit in a walled garden, thinking you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t.
Share what you’ve learned.
You’ll acquire more wisdom showing others the path to enlightenment than sitting in a garden surrounded by walls.
How can you choose a therapist who’s right for you?
conversation about what Reik was thinking and feeling.
5. He shouldn’t just be the President of Hair Club for Men – he should also be a client.
Freud was a bit of a kook, too. His office was filled with weird little statues and doo-dads from various primitive cultures. He loved that stuff.
In this sense, they’re not so terribly different from other musicians and artists, poets and comedians over the years who have intentionally challenged the “acceptable” in order to show us truths about ourselves – people like Jeff Koons, John Cage, Sam Kinison or Allen Ginsberg.
Just for the heck of it, I’ll close with a musical selection by one of my favorite non-conformists: Frank Zappa.
The other day a patient posed a simple, but troubling question: “What am I supposed to do with all this anger?”
There’s an interesting documentary, from 2006, called “Forgiving Dr. Mengele.” It’s about Eva Mozes Kor, a woman who, as a child, was tortured by Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, during hideous experiments he performed on prisoners.
We don’t often own this truth. But pay attention when you hear that something bad happened to someone you don’t like. You’ll catch the corners of your mouth pulling up. You are smiling – a primitive simian indicator of pleasure. Unconscious sadism is a powerful force. Smashing things is fun. Violent movies are fun, too. Most of us are angry most of the time, about something. Anger co-exists with other emotions, and it doesn’t have to have a logical explanation – it just is, and it gratifies you.
The People's Therapist 