short story 2 (The Throes of Therapy)

The Throes of Therapy

I didn’t really want to go. My friend Alice had invited me to a Therapy weekend on the coast and it just didn’t sound like my cup of tea. Somehow it seemed a little psychedelic and 70’s. No, not just that, it was the personal invasion I feared. It felt like volunteering for some one to go through your private diary - risky, possibly hurtful. However I liked Alice, she was a social worker and a listener and a good friend. She dared to think differently and was refreshingly blunt. So the two of us ended up on the coast in Portstewart knocking at the front door of a smart bungalow.

The lady who was hosting the weekend greeted us warmly. She was in her mid 50’s but dressed younger in comfortable clothes. I liked her immediately, her warmth being accompanied by a constant worrying air of fear of giving offence. The apology was there in the warning about the simplicity of the food, the smallness of the house; the warmth was in her smile and tired eyes. Here was someone who thought a great deal, who cared a great deal and really tried hard to please everyone. She led us up to her attic room, where the rest of the group was waiting and introductions were made. Most people seemed to know each other from previous group meetings they had attended. There were around nine of us, all women ranging from their late twenties to late sixties.

We were all served tea and coffee with biscuits and Nan our host apologised profusely for the instant coffee and shop bought biscuits. The group leader arrived, a man of about forty, dressed in black from head to toe. He looked like one of those too smart salesmen types. I don’t know why I’ve always disliked snappy dressers. I prefer scruffy people they seem to have more humanity. In the Physics department where I worked everyone had that slightly uncared for look, as if their mind was on higher things than if their socks matched. He was introduced to us by Nan, who managed in one sentence to apologise once again for the room, the food that would be served later that day, the uncomfortable chairs and for starting late. There was no smile of greeting and he nodded at all of us quite formally and as I looked at all the eager nervous faces around the room I felt our vulnerability. We were in his hands and I felt a stirring of resentment and sensed that all of this was not my cup of tea.

He started by giving us a short introduction to the field using a drawing board. On it he drew a big circle and around it joined by arrows where the words emotions, desires, history, sub conscious etc. It amazes me how ‘arty’ fields get away with such artifices and hand waving. As if human beings could be drawn in such simple terms. I’m becoming sceptical of his theory. If we cannot understand fully the intricacies of the simple atom’s interior how can we guess at the complexities of our own brain structures? The uncertainty principle holds surely? Stop being critical, I tell myself.

The first exercise is a visualisation, we all have to walk into a house (in our minds) and describe our favourite room. He then proceeds to interpret our rooms. The emptiness of one woman’s room symbolised Jane’s empty lonely life, the cluttered prettiness of Nan’s mental living room meant the busy distractedness of some one who gathers things to hide something. On and on he went and I shifted from thinking of him as a salesman to feeling that here was a rather vindictive pratt. I made my room a dark cellar, damp and smelly, nice bait for the chap, I thought. My cellar, he pronounced, was my dark side, a side of myself I wanted to hide. What a major grade A pratt, I thought, as I tried to look introspective as if endeavouring to examine my darker side.

We all had to do drawings with crayons on big sheets. There was lots of laughter as one lady announced it had been fifty years since she’d drawn with crayons and she seemed to have got worse during the time interval. Everyone seemed to do flowers or fragile delicate line drawings, whilst mine were knives and things. My anger was coming out on paper and when Scot pointed this out, that ‘I had a lot of hidden anger’ I could truthfully confess I did indeed! Nearly all of it directed at him, I could have added but didn’t. We were then encouraged to talk about our relationships and one young woman went on and on about her saint like husband. He was kind, intelligent, loving, knew her every wish, every thought. Following hard on some more painful and tearful exposes, this was unique. Julie waxed lyrical about George for about five minutes and her statement for the defence was totally effective until Alice leaned over and whispered, ‘Julie got married to George four weeks ago’. Suddenly everything Julie was saying was then relegated to the unreliable drawer. As if the main witness for the defence was discovered to be a compulsive liar.

Personalities were beginning to gel now and in sharing there was also caring. One woman confessed she hated her body, and how she looked, so much that the only time that she felt truly happy was during her weekly swim when her body was underwater and her head covered by a swimmers cap and a pair of goggles. She started crying ‘I know I look ridiculous dressed like that but at least the water hides me, during the rest of the week I feel much more foolish, but everyone can see me, and I can’t hide.

Another plumpish lady admitted that the high point of her week was her visit to Marks and Spencer’s where she always bought a chocolate cake. ‘Eating that chocolate cake is the high point of my week, there’s nothing else in my life that even comes close to having that cake’. Veronica, an elderly lady, said her happiest days were when she used to bake for her five young children. She remembered their faces enjoying her baking around the kitchen table. That was thirty years ago, she confessed, and now her life was so empty and useless, only the memory of those happy days kept her sane. ‘I don’t mind others thinking of me as a stupid old woman who forgets things, it’s just I hate gradually realising that’s how I think of myself too!’

Painful moments and memories moulded us into a united yet diverse bunch. I felt protective of them all and decidedly uncomfortable with Scot. He prodded in an analytical but unsympathetic way. Challenging Nan brutally with ‘why do you apologise for everything?’ Nan was instantly contrite and in attempting not to be apologetic in response became pathetically remorseful. We once had a dog like that on my Grandfather’s farm who, when you approached it, crouched low on its belly, head held low to the side as if expecting to be hit but wanting to appease. Nan adopted a similar stance and I wanted to head butt Mr Scot into next week. Strangely everyone else seemed mellow and open and I bit hard on my anger. I told myself, I’m probably more screwed up than everyone here, be quiet, they all want this. It’s a learning experience, remember you’re the novice, they’ve all been through weekends like this before. Don’t judge, don’t be so critical. I tried hard to relax.

The next exercise consisted of us being in pairs. One of the pair holds a mirror for their partner who examines their faces minutely in the mirror. I looked in my mirror and saw my face. It’s something I usually see when I look in a mirror and when we were all told to read an emotion all I could see was my own searching investigative look glaring back at me. When we changed roles and I held the mirror it was Nan who now gazed at her self. Huge tears began to run down her cheeks and I wanted to reach out and comfort her, but Scot said ‘Don’t try and change a person’s feelings during this exercise by speaking or touching them, let them own their own emotions’. It was a long five minutes for me, knuckles white holding that blasted mirror while Nan cried quietly at her reflection.

Afterwards Nan spoke about how she saw herself as nothing. All these years of life and she had nothing to show for it. As she spoke there was such an ocean of sadness in the room and Scot did not dispel it, he merely turned to the next person for their account. He seemed devoid of empathy. I was now the attorney for the prosecution and Scot was in the dock, hardly fair, as he was here to help us, reportedly. He challenged Nora, an extrovert, on her fatness. She tried to field his charge lightly but he brought the sword in again hard and sharp and remorseless. ‘Why was she so fat?’ There was to be no brush off with humour. Nora sighed and tried to be honest, but in the brutal spotlight of his questioning, her replies sounded evasive. Or at least, that’s what he said. That someone should hurt Nora, a truly nice person, so vindictively and openly left all the other faces round the room trying not to draw attention to themselves in case they were the next victim.

When the break for lunch came everyone spilled out into the pretty garden carrying plates of food and talking in high voices and silly laughter to dispel the tension. By the time we had our coffee on the patio, people had begun to unwind. When we all filed back up into the attic room, silence fell again. Coming in last I sensed an uncomfortable air. Scot was sitting frowning and everyone else was looking decidedly concerned. It was all the more disturbing, as his anger was the first emotion he’d actually demonstrated during the entire weekend so far. In the face of tears, sheer desperation and sometimes almost suicidal rage he had remained unmoved, now he was angry, what on earth had happened? Had World War III erupted during the lunch break? I postulated. Scot lifted his watch and tapping it with a stiff forefinger asked what time it was. Some one said the time in response but in a reluctant choked voice as if volunteering the time might draw unpleasant attention to themselves. Scot intoned in a cold voice ‘We all agreed to start the afternoon session at two o’clock sharp. It is now a quarter past two’.

There was a flurry of apologies and Veronica wrung her hands in desperation ‘I am so sorry, Mr Scot, I really hate being late and always make an effort to be early for things, so others won’t be kept waiting. I’m so sorry. Really and truly.’ Julie who had been so radiantly happy all weekend, she with the saint-like husband, began to sob ‘please don’t be angry with us, we didn’t mean to do it. George doesn’t allow me to be late for anything, it’s one of his ten rules. I shouldn’t have come here without him, see how I lose my way without him. I’m a stupid child without his rules’ she began sobbing again. ‘When I stick to his rules, life is wonderful. I really need him.’ Saint George fell considerably in my estimation after this outburst. Nora tried to sacrifice herself for everyone else by claiming the whole thing had been her fault. ‘I should have checked the time, Nan was concentrating on preparing the food, I could have watched the time better’. Scot turned in her direction and said coldly ‘sort of a time watcher instead of a weight watcher!’ The sharpness of his retort took my breath away. But not quite all, so I used what I had left to say, ‘I enjoyed my lunch and I enjoyed my coffee after my lunch but I don’t enjoy the way you are trying to make these women feel guilty about some hang-up of yours.’ Oh dear, were was my control?

I could sense the chaos in the room; I had broken the atmosphere so carefully nurtured during the weekend. People had trusted Scot with their inner most feelings and now I had kicked the source of all wisdom with my crudity. A few looked at me with disappointment mixed with surprise. The sympathy of the room was shifting back in Scot’s favour. Then Nan spoke into the unpleasantness and when she spoke it was to Scot she addressed herself. She stood as she spoke ‘We are not children, Mr Scot’. If I had been pole axed I could not have been more surprised. Dear gentle apologetic Nan had taken Mr Scot to task. My anger had been expected, I am angry by nature, probably. But to be savaged by the poodle in our midst, that really did hurt. The surprise defeated Mr Scot. The rest of the afternoon was tricky and Mr Scot, without his pedestal, really earned his fee for the weekend. It’s a risky affair being a salesman in the emotion business.