4/13/2021 Therapointless...
When I was a young child, around 5 or 6 years old, my mother decided to send me to therapy because, if memory serves, I had become really quiet. That is, not wanting to talk to people. Rewind a couple years first, and I remember an interaction I had with a second grade teacher at the school I would later attend. My father worked at the school at the time as a teacher's assistant and coach for various sports. One day, I was walking through the halls with him when we bumped into this teacher. I remember my father introducing me to her, "Mrs. Mills, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Jennifer." Being a teacher of young people, she had the air you would expect: talking in that sort of sing-songy voice and extending the vowels out unnecessarily. I guess people think it's supposed to make children comfortable, but I really think it's condescending. Not that she was particularly condescending overall. Anyway, I smiled weakly and averted my eyes. When she bent down to get to my eye level, something a lot of adults do when speaking with children to signal equality, she asked, "And how old are you?" Why is it they always want you to tell them how old you are? I used to do this to kids too, which I now feel kinda bad about. I can only speak for myself, but maybe it's that you want to engage the kid in conversation because, y'know, they're another human and you want to get to know them, but being an adult and so far away from childhood, you assume they don't have anything to talk about because you assume they don't know anything, except maybe that they're learning how to count, and surely they can count as high as their age if they are under 2 1/2 feet tall. This is really presumptive and downright degrading on the part of the adult. Just because someone is 4 doesn't mean they don't have a lot going on in there. Sure, it might be fantasy if the kid is prone to living in fantasy like I was, but still, their age? That's the best you can come up with for engaging conversation??
Still looking at the floor with one hand holding my dad's and the other at my side, the only muscles in my body to move were the ones in the thumb and back of the hand to lower my thumb and straighten the four fingers to indicate my age, 4. To this day, I'm not sure I could pinpoint exactly why, but I would like to have disappeared in that moment. Later, in the car, my dad asked me why I looked away and only held out my fingers to Mrs. Mills. I told him I didn't know. Looking back, I think I felt really intimidated and put on the spot. I often preferred to play by myself, away from the adults, when I was that age and for a long time after. To this day, there's really only one person I'm comfortable around. Whenever one or the other would check in on me, I felt like I was being examined, tested, like I wasn't normal or what they wanted me to be.
So here I am, four years old, being forced into interactions I don't want to have for whatever reason (maybe I could already feel that people are shit and will rip your heart out and eat it while you sit there, hole in your chest, gasping for air in your last moments of consciousness). Anyway, back to the therapy. I know that it was around the time of my parents' separation that I was sent there, so maybe it was that I had been "quiet" for a few years already, and my mom assumed that the divorce would send me over the edge or something, so she decided it was time.
I don't really remember that first round of therapy. There might have been some Play-Doh involved, and I think I remember some coloring, some puppets, and a sandbox. I definitely remember the sandbox. What I also remember is, "what the fuck is this?" Of course, I didn't know the word fuck yet, but that's the emotion. I again felt put on the spot for what I can see now was absolutely no reason whatsoever. So I was quiet? Who gives a shit? Instead of letting me develop language naturally and on my own timeline, I was "nurtured" in a way that the adults wanted instead of in the way I wanted, or the way nature intended. In the current situation, every attempt is made to strip the child of their natural selves so that they will fit into a box. This box represents what is acceptable behavior and personality type to society. When the child doesn't fit into that box, then it is deemed that something is wrong with the child, and that reflects poorly upon the parent. Ever concerned about image, that's why every parent is so desperate to fit the child into the box, no matter the cost. This box-cramming starts before birth, but these are my first lucid memories of this phenomenon as it applies to my life. I can't tell you what a great disservice this feels like to me, and it's not that I really blame my mother or father entirely. I'm sure they were doing what they thought was best, but I'd argue, now that I'm 37 and have gained some knowledge, that what they thought was best was really only based on misguided principles. I'm not sure, but I think I went for another round of therapy at age 9 or so. I remember the therapist had shelves covering the entirety of one of the walls of her office, which was a pretty good size room, and those shelves were bursting full with board games, books, toys, all kinds of things a 9 year old loves to get their hands on, but never once did we play. I always hated going to therapy because I'd have to sit there, not knowing why I'm there, not knowing what to say, so forcing myself to say something (!) just so the therapist would say something to me, all the while, staring at these shelves full of fun things that I'd much rather be doing but not doing them. I think I brought it up once when I was back for another round at 14 (I had become "moody." Big shocker: A moody teen in the (Gregorian) 20th century.), and the therapist acted surprised. "Oh! You wanna play a game?" This round of therapy saw me not only going to my weekly private session but also a weekly, or maybe monthly, group session! Oh boy! More unnecessary interactions and double the paycheck for the therapist! To be fair though, I jumped at the idea of going to group. By this point in my life, I wanted a social group, and I guess you could say I had one at school, but they were all bitches. There was basically no one nice at my school. It was a private school, so who can say they're surprised? No friendships evolved out of the group therapy, and actually, I remember thinking, "this is so dumb." every time I went. It's a little late and thousands of dollars down the drain, but I'm starting to wonder if my therapist was just a really bad therapist and a really good liar/saleswoman. When I confronted her about wanting to switch therapists when I was 17 (back again, against my will, after a suicide attempt), she of course gave me the old, "yeah, you could do that, but the new therapist won't know all your history." She always called my brother by the wrong name. Jimmy instead of Jamie, so pretty close, but you'd think she'd at least look at my file before I came in, right? Or at least, just say, "your brother" instead of fucking up the name every damn time. By this point in my life, I was extremely compliant with adults (to their faces), so I just let that sinking feeling penetrate me and gave up. So not only the whole, "I'm not letting my paycheck walk out the door," thing, but she would also often fall asleep during our sessions. Snoring and everything. So here I am, 17, with genuine emotional turmoil (you don't swallow thousands of milligrams of acetaminophen for fun), and the one person who's supposed to be able to help me is just flat out saying, "I don't give a shit, where's my money?" Instead of being given reassurance and tools for coping with emotions, I was given constant degradation. I'm not whining, just saying. After graduating high school, I called her a couple times for some support but was pretty much given the, "I can't do anything for you anymore." Who knows, maybe she wasn't licensed to sleep through the problems of people over 18. I ended up house sitting for her a couple times. She had a really nice house in a really nice neighborhood and a couple of cats. Looking back, I wonder how much of that wicker furniture my parents bought for her. Or maybe it was the carpeting or the gas range. Comments are closed.
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