Herewith the conclusion of the case fiction I presented last Friday. You will understand that, considering the length, it was better to present it in two halves.
Much time had passed since Imogen had last given any of her clients the silent treatment. She had rejected this relic from the Freudian past because it was rude and insulting. An individual who felt disconnected and detached did not need to have a therapist who refused to look him in the eye or to converse.
So, Imogen wanted to converse and discuss. She wanted to engage in normal exchanges with her clients. Some thought it was a bizarre experience. Most got used to it.
First, Imogen wanted to diminish Clarissa’s jealousy. To do so she adapted a cognitive technique. Since the jealousy derived from one interpretation of her husband’s behavior, Imogen tried to offer some other interpretations. She invited Clarissa to join her in imagining other scenarios that might have caused Garrett to withdraw. She suggested that these other scenarios were less dramatic and less compelling than the narrative about the mistress.
True enough, Clarissa had entertained alternatives. At one time she believed that Garrett might have made a mistake with anesthesia and perhaps lost a patient. Perhaps he is the only one who knew and felt burdened with a truth that he could not share. How could his wife respect him if she heard such news? If anyone mentioned it to the wrong person, he could be facing a major malpractice suit, or even charges of criminal negligence.
Clarissa followed the exercise and admitted that she had imagined that Garrett suspected that he was ill, but was hiding his symptoms from everyone, beginning with his wife and through his physician. As a physician’s wife, Clarissa was aware of the fact that male doctors especially refuse to admit anything that resembles illness. They often make the worst patients.
Imogen found these interpretations plausible. They did not have the sordid tone that the jealousy narrative had, but they worked to balance Clarissa’s judgment.
Yet, Clarissa was not ready to give up. She insisted that she and her husband had always told each other everything. She could not accept that he was keeping something from her, because he did not trust her fully.
And yet, Imogen pointed out, if the problem was professional, there was nothing that Clarissa could do. If the problem involved another lover, then she could feel that she might win back his affections.
Would you trust yourself to keep a professional secret? Would you have found it impossible to keep the secret? Would you have chosen to share it with someone very close to you, regardless of the risk?
Such were the questions that Imogen asked Clarissa. She was slightly indignant at the assumption that she might not be completely trustworthy. She did not believe that her husband would ever make such a mistake and she knows that malpractice lawsuits are part of the business.
So she responded that she would stand with her husband, no matter what. She was confident that he understood as much. She added that if she discovered he was seriously ill, of course, she would stay with him. It is grossly insulting to imagine that she would walk out on a sick husband.
These are not the only alternatives. What if Garrett made some bad investments? What if he had a gambling problem? What if they needed to sell their apartment and move to less spacious quarters? Perhaps, Garrett had failed as a breadwinner and was incapable of admitting to it.
Clarissa had never imagined it. She counted on the stability of her home and had never doubted that the family would remain in their three bedroom co-op on East End Avenue.
Evidently, the scenarios that Imogen was inviting Clarissa to imagine did not involve her being at fault. They did not allow her to blame herself by inventing a scenario where her husband was leaving her because she had become less interesting and even older.
Imogen had expected a bout of self-doubt. She did not want to let it go unchallenged. She began: “Of course, we do not know whether or not your husband still loves you. Besides if you fall in love with self-doubt you will make it more difficult to function within your marriage.
Imogen reasoned that however necessary it might be to allow such feelings, encouraging their full expression in treatment, counting them as legal tender, would set Clarissa on the wrong course.
Imogen wanted to conjure alternative scenarios. So she asked Clarissa if she could recall any other thoughts about what was wrong. Clarissa admitted that a few had been so ridiculous that she had quickly banished them from her mind. In one she imagined that Garrett had fathered an illegitimate child on a ski trip to Vail some seventeen years ago. What if both mother and child had relocated to Manhattan and had contacted Garrett in order to make him a more active part of their lives. Perhaps they are requesting financial support, and threatening to sue him.
In that scenario he wanted to protect his wife and daughter, but felt some responsibility to a grown-up son who bears a strong resemblance to him. As she grew silent, Imogen remarked: “Such a secret would not signify any rejection of you. In fact, it would show the opposite, his commitment to you and Chloe. The one person Garrett cannot face is the one he feels like he betrayed.
Clarissa explained that if something similar had happened before they had met, she would more easily forgive him. If it had happened during their marriage, forgiveness would be more difficult.
And yet, whatever the reason, Garrett had shut his wife out of his life. Clarissa concluded that her husband must be guilty of some transgression.
Imogen wanted to show her client how to step back from her dilemma and to consider all the different possibilities.
Clarissa had been willing to follow Imogen’s exercises, which resembled nothing as much as policy analysis. And yet, she did need to address the possibility that Clarissa was right. And then she would need to help her client formulate a plan of action for dealing with the situation.
From her own experience with marriage and from her work with couples in crisis, Imogen had developed a deep aversion to divorce. As for cheating husbands, Imogen knew that more often than not men were creatures of routine and habit. They would go to considerable lengths to avoid the disruption of divorce. The image of a man dropping everything to ride off into the sunset with a comely young lass is a woman’s fantasy. Most men will not destroy their family for a romantic dalliance.
To put it differently, it would be better if Clarissa thought about how to save her marriage, not how to exit it.
And then there was the other woman. Imogen raised a simple issue. However Garrett thought and felt about a current girlfriend, she might not feel the same way. It might be more casual for him than for her. He might have got himself caught in a situation he was having difficulty managing. Perhaps she was pressuring him to leave his wife.
Now, Imogen’s strategy was to affirm the alliance between Clarissa and Garrett. She wanted Clarissa to see herself as the solution, not the problem. It would be better for her to see herself as her husband’s ally than as a rejected spouse.
Imogen wanted to help her patient recover her shattered confidence and she wanted to diminish the anxiety about a drastic change in life circumstances. Even if Garrett was having an affair with a comely nurse, Clarissa was still holding more than a few cards of her own. First she had been functioning as a wife and mother for many years.
Considering the importance of reconfiguring Clarissa’s place in her marriage, it was a good thing that she had not confronted her husband and had not expressed her feelings fulsomely. It was also good that she did not do what many therapists would recommend, to whine and complain.
And Imogen wanted Clarissa to act like a wife and mother. She did not want her client to withdraw from those roles, the better to leave the places open for another woman. And that meant, Clarissa would need to create circumstances under which Garrett could explain what was the matter. Again, the best way to accomplish this end would be for Clarissa to act as though nothing were.
Treatment now needed to concern itself with social skills more than with psychological explorations. Surely, introspection, withdrawal from the situation, would have done very little to solve the problem.
You might guess that creating the conditions for a serious talk is more difficult than blurting out: We have to talk. As everyone knows, that unfortunate phrase puts the other person on his guard. It is almost a threat.
So Imogen wanted Clarissa to invite Garrett out for Saturday dinner. At a time when her daughter was having a sleepover, she would make a reservation at a favorite restaurant, La Parapluie. Surely, a public venue was better than a living room. The more public, the less chance there will be anything untoward. No one wants to become a public spectacle.
Imogen explained her reasoning: “If you feel rejected and excluded,you should act in the opposite way, by affirming your connection with your husband. Your public connection, not merely your private connection.
As for raising the issue, this is tricky. In the best of circumstances, Clarissa would confess to a problem she is having, a problem that has been weighing on her. By definition, when someone opens up about a personal problem, the other one is, according to the laws of conversational reciprocity, more inclined to reciprocate. Besides, if the problem is personal, there is nothing resembling an accusation.
Imogen wanted Clarissa to be the solution, not the problem. She did not want her client to blurt out her suspicions or to attack her husband for withholding. She understood that Clarissa ought to be able to walk away from the dinner feeling pride in the way she had conducted herself.
If Clarissa wanted her husband to explain himself and to take responsibility for his bad behavior, accusations and indictments were clearly not the way to do so. They make people defensive.
So, Imogen counseled Clarissa to consider the possibility, not only to confess to a sin or two, but to claim responsibility for the seeming breakdown of their marriage. Considering that Garrett had been a less-than-adequate husband, Clarissa could opine that she does not believe that she has been a very good wife.
Evidently, the self-deprecating approach is a ploy, a way of testing the waters. If her husband responds by going on the attack, she will know that something is seriously wrong, and that she is not responsible for it.
This communications gambit assumes that the moral duty to reciprocate is stronger than the will to destroy or to gain power over the other person. One would like Garrett to respond by taking responsibility for his own bad behavior. If he does not, the situation is worse than Clarissa thought.
So, Imogen was coaching Clarissa. She was preparing her to enter the fray with her husband. She was trying to help her to avoid psychodrama or grand opera. She wanted her client to help solve her problem, not to make a spectacle of herself.
So, Clarissa set off to have a Saturday dinner with her husband.
Waiting for Clarissa’s first session after her dinner with her husband Imogen was slightly anxious. Imagine her surprise when Clarissa sat down and explained that she had discussed the situation with Garrett and that all of their hypotheticals were wrong.
In truth, Garrett knew that something was wrong, but he had no idea what it was. Somehow the joy had been drained from his life. He was too embarrassed about his depressed mood to talk about it with his wife. He had no reason to be depressed, and yet, depressed he was. So he had made an appointment next Tuesday to see a psychiatrist.
Clarissa, however, had taken charge of the conversation. She had asked Garrett: “Do you remember when it started? It must have been caused by something?”
Garrett gulped hard and went silent. Clarissa simply said: “Please.”
He replied that he thinks it began when his father’s doctor told him that his father had been diagnosed with acute leukemia. There is nothing they can do, and his father abhors radical medical interventions.
The doctor told Garrett first, and then his mother, but had not yet told his father. His mother thought it best that his father not find out. Garrett thought he could handle it, because he is a physician, but he began having morbid thoughts about his father dying, his mother being alone, his being responsible for her.
His mother continued to insist that nothing could be gained by telling his father. Garrett had felt that if he told Clarissa she would not be able to hide the truth. His father would see it on her face the next time they got together.
Imogen was surprised to hear this. Its sheer implausibility made it plausible. She had in the past counseled people who did not want their loved ones to know that they were dying. And yet, she was still puzzled by the fact that Garrett had kept his wife in the dark.
Clarissa replied: “It was not very clear to me either. I felt that I had been excluded from something that we ought to be sharing as a couple. I did not want to express personal hurt, because it would have paled next to his, but I did want to understand why he had not confided in me. So I asked him point blank.”
“What did he say?” was all Imogen needed to interject.
“In part he thought he was protecting me from a bizarre aspect of his family life. He was embarrassed at how his mother was handling the situation. He had suspected that his father was gravely ill, but he did not want to alarm people. Besides, he thought that if he had started to talk about it he would have become overly emotional. He does not like me to see him weakened. He was thinking that the feelings would sort themselves out, and then he would tell me. “
Imogen interjected: “Now that he has told you, how do you feel about it?”
“I feel considerably better,” Clarissa replied. “I feel like a fool for having become so jealous, but my obsessions have vanished for now. I am glad that I kept my fantasies to myself.”
Some therapists would insist on a further analysis of the content of Clarissa’s obsessions. Imogen saw no great advantage to saddling her client with these thoughts. She felt that the best outcome of these consultations would be for Clarissa to discard her demons as so much static. Not everything that passes through your mind is relevant.
Coda-- I hope you enjoyed reading this case fiction. Next week I will offer another case with another coach.
I have several open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, please contact me via email, at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.
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