“He’s a good talker but there’s no follow through,” said the sneezing middle-aged woman who sat across from me on the aging wicker loveseat in my office. She was referring to the boy’s father, whom she was in the process of taking to the judicial cleaners (“ She’s barely half his age and already been divorced twice”, referring to her husband’s new girlfriend). Mrs. Olsen had brought her pensive, distrustful 14-year-old son in for counseling because he had been stealing at school and was drinking and smoking pot. When I spoke to her alone, she cried out her fear and anguish for her son. She was afraid, she said, that he would turn out like her middle son, who was stealing and drinking and taking drugs. She had already given up on the older boy, though he was only 17. Then she gladly plunked down a wad of cash, left her most precious cargo with a man she had only met a few minutes earlier, and retreated to the hot parking lot to read a romance novel in her expensive car. (I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried all night long).
So there I was, across from this mild and sensitive young guy who was timidly watching me, checking me out for signs of danger. First counseling sessions are very different from any other social encounter. I guess it is because I have been paid to lower my defenses and have promised not to be hurtful and now it is the prospective client’s turn. Kids from troubled homes usually take only a few minutes to size me up, and then will matter of factly announce that they have scanned me with their “wounded kid” radar and pronounce me harmless. I guess if you have been trounced upon by nearly every adult in your life, you get good at knowing when to circle the wagons.
So I asked the usual questions, social stuff first (what grade are you in, what music do you like, do you still think girls are stupid?) and then on to the deeper things. (If you could change anything about you, what would it be: if the problem that brought you here were solved, how would you recognize it), all the while noting body language, eye movement, voice tone, breathing and looking for the Mist in the Eyes.
The goal of the first session is not a break-through or even a positive change. The goal of the first session is to make a second session more likely. That is the only goal of the first session. Not for monetary reasons but because therapists know that we sometimes lose of clients after the first session. I imagine the thinking goes something like “ I was just being silly about this problem and I have wasted this man’s time, there are really sick people out there that need therapy more than me” or “What was I thinking, this is hopeless, my parents screwed me up so much that no amount of therapy will help me” or “ my coming to therapy won’t change (insert object of blame here_________) anyway and all my friends agree that it is (insert object of blame here _________) that is the messed up one around here, how dare that therapist imply that it is me that needs to change.”
Mrs. Olsen had her guard way up, lost in the Blame Game, but Jimmy did not. Kids will often surprise me with their candor about what is troubling them. I am always tempted to solve the problem for them on the first few sessions and I have to remind myself that the point is for them to learn to solve it themselves. Or at least learn to tolerate it without taking it so personally.
Jimmy said he drinks and smokes pot so that he won’t have to think about his father leaving him when he left Jimmy’s mother. It seems the guy had a ready made family waiting in the wings and that now, whenever Jimmy visits, he has to put up with, and compete with, three strange kids and Dad’s strange girlfriend and he is losing the competition and that sucks and so he gets drunk with his friends, with whom he does not have to compete.
After that had spilled out I saw the Mist in the Eyes. So I said “ You know Jimmy, I don’t know what you have been told about this but I want you to know, Real men cry Real tears” and I drew his attention to the mist in my own eyes as proof. The floodgates opened and the tears fell and I knew I had a chance to help this family. And I also gratefully noted that my compassion was still intact after four straight sessions on a Saturday morning, with the rest of the weekend in plain view.
I am never sure who grows more from therapy, the client or me. But today, it was me. Jimmy went back to the clueless mom and hurtful dad and to his pseudo-friends. I went home to plant a garden and enjoy the spring weather, my spirit renewed and my heart singing the song of the therapist and my mind alive with ideas about how to approach this new problem. Safe in the knowledge that I will probably get another shot or two at the Olsens.
Dave Seward
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