Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [134]
Brandi interrupted her mother to say that the assault was “no big deal.” She said that other things bothered her a lot more than the stupid neighbor. She complained of her mother’s nagging about chores and her father’s strict curfews on school nights. She said her biggest problem was that her parents treated her like a little kid and she was sick of it.
I suggested that it might help to talk about the assault. She said, “Maybe some girls, but I’m not the type who spills my guts to just anyone.”
To my surprise Brandi rescheduled after that first session. The next time she came alone with her stuffed panda. She curled up on my couch and told me the real story.
Shana sat on the couch between her two psychologist parents. She was dressed in jeans and a Jurassic Park T-shirt and looked much younger than her thirteen years. Her father, a big bearlike man in a tweed jacket, explained that Shana wouldn’t go to school. At first she played sick, but later she just wouldn’t go. They couldn’t understand why—her grades were good, she had friends and, as far as they knew, nothing traumatic had happened.
Shana’s mother, a tall, confident woman whose research in addictions I had followed, wondered about depression. Her father had killed himself and one of her brothers had been diagnosed with bipolar depression. She noticed that Shana stayed up nights, slept all day and had no appetite.
I asked Shana why she wasn’t going to school.
She thought for a moment and said, “I feel like I’ll suffocate or stop breathing if I go in that building.”
Jana sipped a blue Slurpee as she told me about her problems at home.
“I hate my mother. She’s such a witch. Sometimes I think if I have to live with her the next four years till I graduate from high school I’ll go crazy.”
I asked what her mother did that made her so crazy.
“She tries to control my life. She makes me clean my room and go to church on Sunday. She forces me to eat meals.”
Pausing, Jana looked slightly chagrined. “It doesn’t sound that bad when I tell you. But trust me, if you lived with my mother, you’d want to puke.”
My undergraduate work in anthropology has always played a role in my work with people. I was taught to understand people within the context of their culture. I learned to ask, “What is the culture expecting of them? What is their script?” In graduate school in psychology, my training was psychodynamic. On internship I was introduced to systems theory.
I’ve learned from many great teachers and from my own experience. Human beings can do three things—think, feel and behave—and I try to make an impact in all three areas. I would call myself a relationship-oriented cognitive behaviorist. I’m influenced by the humanistic psychologists and also by social learning theorists.
I believe that talking to a listener with an accepting, empathic and nonjudgmental stance is healing. When I first meet a client I search for things about her that I can respect and ways in which I can empathize with her situation. I think it’s impossible to help unless I can find these things. I don’t believe that analysis of the past is always necessary. I like ordinary language. In general I don’t like victim talk, self-pity or blaming. I think psychotherapy should empower people, help them be more in control of their lives and enhance their relationships with others.
I try to be what psychologist Don Meichenbaum calls “a purveyor of hope.” I’m pragmatic, relativistic and collaborative. I don’t like negative labels, diagnoses or the medical model. I am drawn to therapists who view families in more positive ways. I like the work of Jay Haley, Harriet Lerner, Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Krestan. I respect Michael White and David Epston, who believe that clients come to therapists with “problem-saturated stories.” It’s the therapist’s job to help clients tell more powerful and optimistic stories about themselves. White and Epston stress that the client isn’t the problem, the problem is the problem, and they prefer what they call “solution talk” to “problem talk.”
They believe