 T = Therapist C = Client T. Good afternnon, Mr Gum C. Howdy. Jest call me Bubble. Bubble Gum. T. (pointing to the chairs) Right. Bubble it is. Have a seat. C. Ya mean I get to choose? T. Sure, Bubble. Pick one. C. I got in a bucket of trouble fer pickin' when I was a tadpole. T. Oh. How come? C. Ma said I shoulda blown my nose, not pick it. T. Guess you don't forget things that bring you grief, huh? C. Right. (sits on the floor) Heerd say I gotta sign papers n', such, Ain't no good with a pen. C'aint spell good. T. All I need is your signature, Bubble. Write your name after I have explained it all to you and you understand what I have said. (Bubble signs the paperwork balancing the clipboard on his knee. T. sees no point in asking if he would prefer another way of communicating. Writing is obviously not an option and other modalities would unlikely be helpful for him). C. Wot's this about reportin' me? I ain't done nothin' criminal. T. Bubble, it means that if I heard you talking about seriously hurting yourself or someone else I am, by law, required to report it. C. I ain't never hurt a fly tail-flicked by my own hoss. Hurt my own self ? Wot would I wanna do THAT for? Yer tellin' me some hombre wud ram his own head in a water trough on purpose? T. I am speaking of something more serious here. This is talking about suicide. If you were telling me you wanted to kill yourself and you had a plan, the means and the way to do it the law says I should do all I can to prevent that from happening. I would have to report it to the police or see about getting you into a safe place like a hospital. C. (looking incredulous) Take my LIFE ! Wot in tarnation would I do that for? T. There are lots of reasons why people want to die. Sometimes life looks so black and overwhelming or painful, suicide seems a good way to get away from everything. Put an end to the suffering. Some people lose a great job and feel they are a huge failure and worse, sometimes their spouse leaves them and divorce follows. They can't face it. Students, especially in the Orient, will commit suicide when they fail exams. They feel they have brought disgrace to their family and that is unbearable loss of face. Lots of different reasons. C. (snorts) Well I ain't abouta waste my shells putting daylight through my brisket, or messin' up my rope stretching my neck. T. Bubble, I hope not, but there are more ways of dying than shooting or hanging. When I've finished telling you what these papers are about I'd like to hear why you came to see me. Later. T. So. How come you are here? C. My Aunt DooDah Day said fer me to talk to you. She'n my Uncle Yester are closer'n than my cousin's love birds chirpin' their feathers off all day. (see DooDah in " Interview. Lighter side" at www.goessoftlyishere.com) T. Yes, I recognize a certain family likeness to your Aunt DooDah. What I meant was what did you want us to look at together that might help solve a problem? ( Client sits without talking for nearly ten minutes. T. sits quietly and waits, looking at C. and conveying that it's alright to take however much time he needs). C.(finally looking up). You ever feel like you wuz so corralled there weren't no gate to go through? T. Are you telling me you are feeling trapped? C. Yessir, I mean ma'am. Money's tightern' a cynched girth round my hoss's belly. Wife's talkin' leavin' and I cain't take that. I love her. She's bin my oney ever love since we were schoolkid sweethearts. But ain't nothin' I can see a way outa this one. ( Client goes on to describe trying to work two jobs that bring little income barely covering rent and leaving too little to cover the bills. Wages from his wife's job buys food and bare neccessities for living. Their three children, 6yrs, 4yrs and 1yr need new clothes but there's not enough money to buy them in Thrift stores.) T. Sounds like your greatest distress is the thought of losing your wife and children? C. (with agonized expression). Right. I couldn't live without them, I jest couldn't . T. What have you been doing to help cope with all this stress, Bubble? C. ( sheepishly) I guess I'm a mite heavy on the bottle sometimes, ma'am. T. Sometimes. That means how much, how often? (client relates symptoms of alcoholism). T. Do you use other drugs? Weed or any others? C. Nope. T. What else do you do to deal with sadness and feeling trapped? C. Sometimes I go to the rodeo and ride bulls. Can make a bit extry that way. T. Anything else? C. I help out weekends herding Texas longhorns at round up. Get paid for that too. In season that is. T. Bubble, I noticed your strong reaction when we were talking about suicide. I also noticed that your very pleasant smile does not reach your eyes. They seem full of sadness and somewhat fearful. You have a very heavy load of troubles and I can see how you would feel corralled and trappped by all this. Would you let me describe a picture here and then you can tell me what you see in it . Okay with you? C. Shore, I'm listnin' T. I'm seeing a good hearted man who loves his wife and children very much, but life has somehow become full of troubles and grief. To cope with this the man starts drinking heavily, perhaps not knowing that alcohol is affecting his judgment, destroying his brain cells and will eventually ruin his liver. He also goes bull riding, where he risks getting gored, trampled on, or worse, crippled for life or killed. Then he volunteers to help with rounding up Texas longhorns that also has the potential for serious injury or death should they get spooked and stampede. So the remedy this man has to escape his burdens is to get drunk, risk his life and hope desperately he can get out of his corral of problems. What do you see in this picture, Bubble? C. Waal, puttin' it like that 'ppears it could be another way of dying like you wuz talkin' about. T. Bubble, your absolutely right. We both know this is a picture of how your life is right now as you've been telling me. However, it seems to me it isn't really what you would like it to be? Am I hearing you right? (Client nods) It is totally your choice to say if you think the booze, bulls and cattle are the answer. Or would you like to see if together, we could figure a way to change your corral to one that keeps you and your family safely inside and the drink and dangerous livestock out? C. Ma'am, that shore as heck fits my saddle. You don't know how much my little lady 'n kids mean to me. I'll do anything to stop losin' them. T. Good. Let's start with the booze. (session ends discussing treatment for alcoholism) The objective of the story above is to illustrate one of many ways of dying. Suicide is one form of taking ones life. But natural and accidental death apart, dying is not neccessarily a news-making event, dramatic and shocking - using a gun, rope or poisen. At nineteen, I tried saving pills to overdose but fortunately, ( for me), they were stolen. But I was dying in much more subtle ways. It is the subtle ways that we, as survivors, sometimes do not recognize without help, and that therapists sometimes miss when addressing the obvious rather than what the obvious may signify. It is helpful at times, (it was for me long years ago), to remember and understand how I was actually dying without the help of the bottle of pills. (see, 'The Bottle', at: www.goessoftlyishere.com) Here are three of the ways. ** As a child I kept myself away from people. Alone with my fears, my grief, my hurt, my pain. Away from the hostile and the friendly. Away from crowds or the few. Away from any interests or stimulation that could, and would, broaden horizons of knowledge and learning beyond my narrow world. (I read ferociously but this did not give the needed view, different frame of reference that person to person discussion or debate can challenge and enlighten). Away from school children, teachers, social contacts of my mother unless ordered to attend functions. Away from all that would bring attention to me. Away, meant being free from the danger of allowing anyone to get close. Noone and nothing could be trusted so "away" meant I didn't have to think about all the traps I could fall into. This is the dying of Isolation. It is a self-imposed circle that closes in with ever smaller rings around the heart, mind and soul, gradually suffocating any desire or feeling the need to interact with anyone or anything. ** In my teens, not eating did not seem to be anything untoward. I wasn't hungry and when I was nursing I was too busy and would go a full ten hour or longer shift on a bar of chocolate. (still my one real temptation - dark chocolate). Medical studies did not seep into the personal realm to register I was fooling around with my electrolyte balance and other imbalances that could send my heart into a fatal arrhythmia. I was not bulemic, but the same risks hold. This is the dying of slow physical starvation. ** Lethargy. How well I remember the lethargy of really not caring one whit about anyone or anything. Nothing was worth lifting a finger for. This is the dying of Nothingness. The List goes on but I will not bore the reader with my personal self-inflicted modes of dying. How does one reverse the process? Slow dying, is death of soul, mind and heart -but the GOOD part, The POSITIVE news is that ressucitation is POSSIBLE . IT HAS BEEN DONE. I write here to attest to this. - It is worth seeking friends and therapists who can help us escape dying in Isolation if deep in our hearts this is what we wish. * Talking about the dying of Isolation opens up the huge abyss of loneliness and aloneness and exploring what carved it is the beginning of climbing out. * Talking about the dying of slow Starvation opens up many doors. For example, what it means to have control of something ourselves, or in bulemic spells, to discover what unmet needs we might symbolically be feeding and trying to satisfy in food. Or in laxatives and purging to understand what we are trying to rid from our lives and memory that might or might not have to do with bodily wastes. * Talking about the dying from Nothingness is material for a long long time. It addresses the empty heart, which is a far greater issue than a client presenting with the statement, " my life is just so empty". The latter speaks of the symptom, the former addresses the root of the matter. I will ever be grateful to the friend who took an interest in me not knowing about the life I lived that she never saw. Nor did I tell her. Later, another friend was to enable me to finally break free from my deep conviction that being Chinese was a curse from which I could never break free. Had I had a therapist in those days who recognizes without being told, when someone dying of Isolation, I might have started recovery sooner. I would ask my colleagues from both places, as a survivor and professional, that we support eachother in contributing from our experiences, ways we can better help our clients avoid risk-taking behaviors, death-potential behaviors. Let us not MISS the significant in the seemingly innocuous. I speak to my fellow survivors from the depths of my heart. There is no value high enough to place on a friend or friends who prove their care, love and patience is genuine. Do not reject friends without very careful thought. It can mean the difference between life and death if deep deep down we choose Life. We only have ONE shot at Life - and it can be filled with so many GOOD things. We have known the Bad - let's not MISS the GOOD. I can tell you from my place - it is WORTH the struggle. Goessoftly Retired Therapist www.goessoftlyishere.com (permission for reprints is required)   | LISTENING | RETRAUMATIZATION | PSYCHOBABBLE 1 | PSYCHOBABBLE 2A | PSYCHOBABBLE 2B | Did You Ever Push MY BUTTONS ! ! | Balance | THE INVISIBLE ONES | WEEDS | RECOGNIZING DISTRESS | COMMUNICATION | INTERVIEW (The lighter side) | INNOCUOUS INTERVIEW ? | The THERAPIST as RISK TAKER | TAINTED | CAN I TRUST YOU? | CAN I TRUST YOU? | CAN I TRUST YOU? | Me According to ME | | THE HEALING PROCESS | DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER | POETRY | Biographical Entries | THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE | STORIES FOR LITTLES (Pigmus and friends) | SEEDLING THOUGHTS TO WATER | | Return Home | Great Links | Sign/View Guestbook | |
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