She tells me a story I have heard before. She is in an abusive relationship. She can always sense it/feel it coming. When she does, she provokes him to explode and get it over with. It is not the attack and beating that she can’t stand, that she wants to get over with. It is the feeling/sensations mounting inside of her that she wants to short-circuit and flee from. If he beats her, the feeling inside her goes away. She experiences relief. Relief until the next time. There is always a next time.
As I listen to her, I can feel the terror inside her building– she can’t tolerate it, sit with it or contain it. It flows over and into me and it is almost too much for me. It is visceral. Pure bodily sensation. Beyond words. Perhaps before words.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this story. It seems too many to count. The experience is always the same for me. A nauseating, sickening, shocking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I have heard it spoken from victims of domestic violence, from children that have been abused, sexually and physically. It seems their only defense is to control the feeling inside by provoking their abuser to get it over with. Then the feeling inside goes away, recedes for a time. Until the next time. There is always a next time.
But what is this terror, this unworldly experience? I used to think of it in terms of the concept of predator-prey. The primal experience of being hunted, chased, stalked. Or Melanie Klein’s concept of the fear of annihilation. But these concepts are not able to capture or contain the experience. In fact, I don’t think words can describe the experience, it can only be experienced. And once you have experienced it, you will never be the same. It will change you forever. Shake you to your roots. It will haunt you as it waits in the recesses of your mind waiting to return.
One root of the word terror is a Greek word for tremble. It may be that this is closer to what I am attempting to write about that can’t be written about. It can’t be written about because it is experienced in the body, not the mind. The mind cannot even conceive of this experience. It is inconceivable, beyond thoughts and words. In fact, when experienced, one loses their mind, their thoughts and all that remains is overwhelming physical sensations, shock and panic that you want to flee from.
Perhaps terror is so intolerable because it is not verbal. It can’t be thought about, it can only be felt. It is pure bodily sensation.
And yet, perhaps the fact that it is wordless, beyond words, beyond mind, just pure sensation is the reason why it is so devastating.
How do you digest/tolerate/process the unthinkable–what can’t be thought about. The horribleness of the experience. Is this why some deny the existence of the Holocaust? It was just too horrible to think about? Is this experience at the root of what happens to people who go to war and have to return home carrying the horribleness of their experiences? Is this what happens to police officers, paramedics and surgeons and staff who work in emergency rooms and ICU’s? Too much terror and horror to stand/process?
We pride ourselves on out ability to think and digest experiences. But what if there are some experiences that are just too much for our minds? What if there are some experiences that we can’t process or digest, only experience. Some experiences that can’t even be put into words or communicated? Then what? It is these type of experiences that I believe haunt all of us, and that we are attempting to do something with, hide from or avoid.
When I often think of babies and mothers, I can imagine that a baby might have just these types of experiences. Before words, there probably exists an infinite number of experiences that babies and mothers have. What if some of these are terrifying? And if they are pure terror, how does the mother respond? Will she even notice? How can a baby communicate an experience of terror to mother? And what happens if the baby can’t?
I do not have any answers to any of these questions, only more questions.
But I have felt this experience of terror in and out of the consulting room.
Here are some images from inside the consulting room.
She is talking about a game she played as a child. A game called catch the head. She would play it with her parents. As she continues to talk about this game, I start to feel a shaking, sickening sensation in my stomach. I can’t shake it or understand it. It’s just a game. It’s just a game. Until I get it. The head was a human head from a man the parents had killed.
He is an undercover cop. The first day in my consulting room he tells me that I’m a sitting duck for anyone that would want to kill me. He explains that my office is a corner office with the stairs just outside my front door. There is only one way in and out, and I allow the patient to sit between myself and the door. This was a cardinal rule I learned when working in state mental hospitals–always sit between the patient and the door. The cop explains that someone would just come up the stairs, enter my office, kill me and leave. I immediately think of four specific clients I have been involved with relating to child custody matters. All are fathers. All are abusers. All evoke the feeling of terror in me when I have to deal with them. I can sense that terror just by being in their presence. I have joked that anyone of them would kill me if they could. I decide to have an alarm system put in my office. I still sit with the patient between myself and the door, even though I know how many therapists get killed or injured each year by their patients/clients. It happens either because the therapist underestimates the patient, overestimates their own ability to handle situations in the consulting room, or they have numbed themselves to the feeling of terror. The alarm system is installed, but it does nothing to lessen the feeling of terror I experience.
Today, I have come to believe that this feeling of terror cannot be destroyed. It can be avoided for a while, but it will persist. I do have faith that we can all develop a greater capacity for tolerating the experience which will lead to either catastrophe or growth. Or perhaps catastrophe is a form of growth.
I doubt that there will ever be a way to understand and think about this terror. It is just too much. It can only be experienced and perhaps tolerated and sat with for a while.
I had a supervisor once who told me “Never ask a patient to do something you’re not willing to do”.
Some days I play in my mind with changing the seating arrangement in my consulting room. You know, have me sit between the patient and the door. I usually consider this after another experience with this thing I have called terror. I always dismiss the idea. I know it wouldn’t take the feeling away, and anyway I still want to experience it. Where will it lead? Catastrophe, growth, some unknown place waiting for me to discover? Besides it would be hypocritical. I hear my supervisor’s words in my head. I cannot continue to assist/ask patients to go to a place I am not willing to go.
Dr. Brody