Chapter One
Four Questions
Hurting People Ask * * *
I arrived a few minutes before noon. Brian was already there,
sitting by himself in a dark corner of the crowded restaurant,
nervously tapping the fingers of his left hand on the table, his
right hand holding his chin.
We began with a few pleasantries, ordered lunch, then
spent a few minutes catching up. We talked about the usual sort
of stuff-job, health, the Denver Broncos. We hadn't seen each
other for nearly a month.
Then, with a noticeable sigh, Brian let me know he was
ready. For what, I wasn't sure. When he called asking to meet
me for lunch, I felt his urgency.
His eyes dropped to the spoon he had just picked up. In a
flat voice, he said, "Mary's going to leave me."
A familiar sadness washed over me. I'd been here before.
I've heard words of confusion and despair a thousand times.
When I was in private practice, I heard heartbreaking stories
every day, one after the other. The suffering took its toll. I'm
no longer in practice, but I still talk and share and listen. The
stories keep coming, and hearing them has not gotten easier.
I never know exactly what to say. In many ways, I feel more
adequate writing about counseling than doing it. The notion
that trained therapists select their words according to a well-established
scientific plan, like surgeons choosing where to cut,
is an illusion.
Sometimes I just sit there and look at the people I am
counseling. Maybe I'm trying to connect with who they are and
where they are since I can't change what they're going through.
Sometimes I look away. Connecting
with them can be too heavy a weight
to bear.
At the lunch table with Brian, I
joined him in staring at his spoon. I
knew Mary. I didn't like her. She
struck me as an angry woman, hiding
her fangs behind an unconvincing
smile. I feared what would happen if
I crossed her.
Whether therapist or friend, you
can't always say what occurs to you.
Speaking the truth in love does not
give anyone license to share whatever
he happens to think or feel. When
Brian told me Mary was going to
leave him, my immediate thought
was "Good! I don't know how you've endured that woman for
this long."
I chose not to share my thoughts. But I wasn't sure what
I should say. I wanted to be authentic, helpful, and compassionate,
but words that satisfied those criteria didn't jump out
at me. Wisdom comes slowly, but I've learned that it comes
more often when I tune into my passion to connect with hurting
people instead of trying to figure them out. Connection,
not analysis, seems closer to the center of my work.
Doctors diagnose, then prescribe. So do plumbers and car
mechanics. But counselors relate, more like friends than our
professionalism allows us to admit, and more like pastors than
our billing habits suggest. We're people who pour the fullness
of ourselves into the emptiness of another. Unfortunately,
sometimes our souls don't feel very full.
"What led up to this, Brian?" I asked, not because I
thought it was a good question. I just wanted to know.
"Mary and I have never been close. You know that, Larry.
We've had a lousy marriage for years. If it weren't for the kids,
I'd probably have left her a long time ago. You've never seen
her when she blows up. It's unbelievable.
I cannot please the woman, and
I've never known how to reach her.
I've pretty well given up, but there's
the kids. I don't know what to do."
His eyes returned to the spoon.
I still didn't know what to say. My
initial confusion had advanced to a
sharp feeling of inadequacy. I wished
he were talking to Mother Teresa.
With all those wrinkles that only compassion
can produce, surely she'd
know what to say.
Maybe he needed to tell all this to
a professional. That was my next
thought, which lasted for the second it took me to remind
myself that I was a professional, highly trained, properly
licensed, with a reputation as an effective therapist.
Funny how quickly my mind shifted from. Brian needing a
godly person like Mother Teresa to his needing a trained expert.
But maybe that makes sense. Like most people, when
things go wrong I want someone who knows what he's doing
to fix it.
I remember years ago when our eight-year-old son Kenny
was delirious. His fever measured 105 degrees. He was babbling
nonsense like the chronic schizophrenics I worked with
in locked wards of mental hospitals. He didn't recognize his
mother or me.
I panicked. Was his brain damaged? Would he ever be normal
again? Like Brian, I wanted help. Not knowing what to do,
I wanted answers from someone who did, so I called our doctor.
Did my doctor feel the same inadequacy talking to me that
I felt listening to Brian? I don't think he did. His medical
degree better equipped him to advise a father distraught over a
feverish son than my psychology degree prepared me to counsel
a man whose wife was talking
divorce.
I distinctly recall how good I felt
when the physician took immediate
charge. He asked specific questions,
gave clear and firm directions, and
assured me our son would be fine. We
did what we were told, and Kenny
fully recovered.
As I talked with Brian, I knew that
despite my doctorate in clinical psychology,
I wasn't the same kind of
expert for personal problems as my
physician was for physical ones. Something
was different, and at that moment
I wasn't sure I was an expert at all. But
Brian wanted to believe I was.
That's to be expected. When any of us run into trouble we
can't handle, we want to find someone with solutions. It's comforting
to ask questions of people who have answers. It's maddening
when they don't. When we hurt, we ask questions. And
we insist that someone be able to answer them.
(Continues.)
