Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [67]
I asked Klara why she agreed to come. She looked hesitantly at her father and said, “The counselor thought it would be a good idea.”
I asked what she thought and she said, “I don’t know really.”
Klara admitted that she didn’t like school. She never spoke in class because she was afraid she’d be teased if she said something stupid. She didn’t think she was smart and didn’t believe that studying would help. She had no extra-curricular activities. Aside from caring for her dad, she spent most of her time with her boyfriend.
“And primping,” Kurt interrupted. “Klara spends hours in the bathroom getting herself fixed up for school.”
The one subject she liked to discuss was her boyfriend, Phil, whom she had dated since eighth grade. She described their relationship as close. They didn’t talk much or do much outside their homes; mostly he watched television. Both Phil and Kurt were sports fans and Klara would bring them popcorn and Cokes while they watched ball games.
I asked what Phil liked about her. She thought for a minute and said, “He would say I’m the nicest girl he ever met. And he thinks I’m pretty. He can’t stand fat girls and he thinks I have a good figure. He likes to be seen with me.”
I felt pessimistic about this case. Already Kurt had announced he wouldn’t pay for more than four sessions. I didn’t have much time to help Klara fight her depression. She reminded me of a mannequin. She looked the way women are taught to look, and she acted the way she’d been taught to act. Devoid of liveliness, she was overly socialized in feminine behavior.
I wanted Klara to talk about her mother’s death. I wanted to explore what she wanted, what she valued in herself and others, who she was. I hoped I could broaden her sense of possibilities. I hoped we could talk about her preoccupation with looking good rather than feeling good. I wanted her to stay in school.
I would need to be careful and not set her up for her dad’s anger. He expected her to do as she was told. We would have to discuss when it was safe for her to be assertive. She would still have her chores to do, but perhaps Klara could formulate some new goals for herself.
I asked Klara to do one thing a day to make herself happy. She looked skeptical but agreed. As they left, Kurt said, “This wasn’t as stupid as I thought it would be. I might come back, but don’t get your hopes up.”
I wished Kurt would come in alone. I wanted him to examine his assumptions about feminine and masculine behavior. His views of women were hurting his daughter, and his views of men were keeping him from dealing with his own grief and moving on. He looked frightened of losing control, which for him meant crying or admitting he was scared about Klara. Even though Kurt seemed set in his ways, I suspected that he might be willing to examine his life if properly approached. He loved his daughter even though he had a very limited sense of who she was or could be. I thought of his earlier experiences with doctors and I wanted this time to be different. Last time he lost his wife. This time I wanted to introduce him to his whole daughter.
As Kurt saw progress he relented and let Klara come beyond the four sessions. Klara was a shy, humble person, but like most people, she responded quickly to respect and interest in her opinions. We worked on a variety of issues. Klara managed pain the way her father did, by denial and repression, and my first goal was to teach her some new coping strategies.
I encouraged her to face rather than avoid things that scared her and to talk about rather than bury upset feelings. Like many oversocialized females, Klara had a hard time expressing anger. I asked her about times she was angry or upset and she talked in a low-key, tentative way. Little by little, Klara learned she could talk about feelings and neither of us died of shock.
As often happens, once negative feelings are expressed, clients recover their capacity