Explosions in London

I awoke on that eventful day this week to the news that Al Quaida had detonated bombs in several sites on the London Transit system. While bombings are nothing new to us Brits - we survived two world wars worth of bombings, and years of IRA attacks - I am stunned to recognize that national stoicism runs more deeply in my veins than I had thought. Here's why...

My family lives far enough away from London that I feel reasonably secure in the knowledge that they are all safe. Displaying my famous "glass is half full" personality, I put off calling home until lunch time EST, (5:00pm UK time) at which point I placed a call to my mother - she has always known where everything and everybody is, being the center of the known universe as I know it. Mum informs me that my sister went to London to see a play last night and has not returned home. She then proceeds to tell me that my sister Alison, who is joined at the hip to her "mobile" as they refer to them in the UK, is not picking up her phone and that my mother cannot reach her. I do not feel reassured. I have read online and heard on the news that cell phone lines are jammed in and out of London. In my vivid imagination, my sister is lying broken and bleeding somewhere in a London hospital or, worse, a London morgue, while her cell phone buzzes plaintively inside her copious (and ubiquitous) handbag.

I try to call my sister's home phone number before heading into the office to see clients and there is no answer.

Several clients ask me in concerned tones whether I have been impacted by the news from London. I find that I have to tell them that my sister appears to be missing. They look shocked and confused, and express concern and good wishes. I can't decide whether telling them is a lapse in clinical judgment on my part or not - but the truth is out. Interestingly, I get a very different response from friends and neighbors. They laugh and smile with embarrassment when I tell them my fears about Alison. Flustered, they apologize for smiling and explain that it's such serious news, they don't know how to process it. I understand their response, or leastways I have an explanation for it. Despite the out-of-the-ordinary sharing that I did with some of my clients about my sister being missing, the sharing was done in an environment that invites affect, emotion and feeling, even if there was a tables-are-turned quality to the sharing. Neighbors and friends are not expecting the information. Standing on our respective stoops with groceries and house-keys in hand, they are unprepared for the information, and not sure what response they should have and what is permissible in terms of displays of emotion.

Throughout the week, I notice that I am "spectatoring" my own responses, and pay attention to the feeling of tension that I notice in my body, the irregularity in my breathing and the tightness in my shoulders when I am think about Alison. I'm most definitely having physiological stress responses to my sister's "disappearance," it's just not surfacing into my consciousness. As I often instruct my clients to do, I tell myself that I can most definitely tolerate these feelings, as uncomfortable as they are, and I continue with my work week. I try to reach my mother several times throughout Thursday and Friday and have no luck. Finally, this morning I reach her. Alison is fine. My mother just didn't think to call me, as she assumed I'd realize that Alison would be okay (is this the therapist-as-mind-reader assumption at work again?). My mother's news is received by me with equanimity - actually, my mother was right. I did just know that my sister would be okay. I also find myself forced to identify to with a facet of British stereotyping that I've strenuously suppressed in myself for years - I am WAY more stoic than I like to think. Are optimism and stoicism the same thing? Hmm..I have some interesting things to think about. How will my optimism (or stoicism) affect my work with clients? I feel a blog coming on...