She had described an image/picture in a previous session.
It appeared out of nowhere–that gap in continuity that may peek through the veils of our conscious mind unexpectedly. She is standing at the side of a hospital bed looking down at a person in a coma. She can’t leave because the person might wake up. The person in the coma is herself.
This session I sense that she is getting ready to reveal something she has never told me. Something of great significance. I tell her something like “You appear to be getting ready to tell me about something that you have kept locked away for a long time”.
She agrees, and tells me that after all our sessions together she was about to unlock this door last session, but I rescued her by talking about myself. Obviously I missed this last session.
I ask her what it is. She says she doesn’t know, but I don’t buy this.
She tells me that she has told me “everything”. I respond with something like, “I know you read my blog, and you know what happens when you run out of stories and have nothing to say. Now you can tell me what you don’t know.”
She regales me with more stories to hide behind. I allow this, but comment on it.
I can feel whatever it is inside her building. I allow it and resist the temptation to rescue her again.
Finally, she explodes her secret into the air of the session. It is now public. Out in the open. Perhaps now she can come out of her coma for a while.
The patient assaults my mind with their words–endless, incessant chatter. I am alternately bored and irritated.
I can’t find a way to connect with them. This is obviously the idea.
I can’t think, as if my mind has become entombed/enveloped in a wall of words.
I keep searching to sense the patient, but they are not there.
I relax, and finally am able to wrest my mind free for a moment from their words. I stumble out some comment on what they are doing with me. The words stop, and emotions start to emerge.
Finally, the wall is down for a moment, and we see each other.
It is not difficult to hide in the consulting room. Some patients are more skilled at it than others.
It is only 50 minutes of agony. Patients can avoid/hide for that amount of time, which I imagine for some seems like an eternity.
But eventually, the stories, catastrophes, words, crises run out. There are just the two of us, and perhaps at that moment we can briefly meet to retreat until the next 50 minutes of agony.
Dr. Brody