Therapy Dog

For many, many years I had a beloved therapist, Linda, (now retired) who saw me through some of the most challenging times of my life. She was accompanied daily by her Welsh sheep dog and being Welsh myself, despite not particularly being an animal lover, I approved of her choice of canine. My mother loves dogs, and growing up she would regale us with stories of her favorite dog of all time, also a Welsh sheep dog, Akeila. For this and other more patriotic reasons I hold the breed in high esteem.

Linda's office was on the second floor of the building she shared with three other therapists, and she would always come down to the waiting room to welcome me, with her dog (whose name unfortunately escapes me) at heel next to her. Linda would lead the way up the stairs, followed closely by me. Her faithful companion would herd us both up the stairs and into our respective chairs. His work done, he would quietly lie on his bed next to Linda's desk for the remainder of the session, getting up only when I arose in order to herd me to the door. He didn't take part in the sessions; he didn't attempt to comfort me when I cried, he didn't respond when I or Linda laughed. His job was clear cut...protect his mistress and herd the clients. He did his job well. Other than the occasional head pat, the dog and I did not interact. We were mutually disinterested in each other beyond our assigned roles as herder and client.

My own dog is a designer mutt, half Maltese and half Shi Tzu. He has hair, not fur, and is therefore not likely to cause allergic reactions in folks. He doesn’t shed, which is a huge relief to me – self-confessed neatnik that I am. Standing approximately 14 inches tall and weighing 12.8 pounds, he is a crotch-sniffing, human toe-slurping, tail-wagging bundle of white and beige fluff. He is no Welsh sheep dog. To put it mildly, he is not a working dog. Rather than herd folks to the couch, he invariably jumps on them, prancing around on his back legs like a circus poodle, impeding their route to the couch by employing various disgusting antics, such as the aforementioned crotch sniffing, along with butt snuffling, heel tweaking and occasional, but annoyingly insistent, pawing. He has bad manners to say the least. But he does eventually calm down and will sit on the couch or lie on the floor in his bed.

I am not a dog-lover. I am, however, a lover of Ziggy and therefore I put up with these disgusting annoyances. I am also careful which of my clients I inflict Ziggy on, and carefully select the days on which he accompanies me to my office.

I have clients who are cat lovers and find Ziggy’s canine mannerisms annoying. I have clients who find his presence distracting, and don’t like it when he is there. I have clients who don’t mind him being there, and after the initial “Ziggy welcome” just ignore him and he settles down. Sparring couples upset Ziggy, and he has been known to stand in front of the couch, howling sadly as they shout at each other. This is not clinically helpful to them, and it's distracting for me, so I usually leave him home on days when I have these couples attending sessions.

But there are people for whom Ziggy’s presence is a therapeutic plus. I have a young boy who comes to therapy with his mother, and won’t talk unless Ziggy is in the room. Without Ziggy in the room, he is morose and quiet. With Ziggy there, he will talk haltingly about the things he feels and fears, in between his romps with Ziggy. Ziggy revels in the young boy’s presence, plays with him as if he was another puppy and licks and slurps the boy’s face with gay abandon. The little boy shrieks and squeals happily, reveling in Ziggy’s puppy play.

I meet with a lonely young woman who can barely keep her hands off Ziggy when he is there, who snuggles him lovingly, and who giggles happily when he is present. She currently has few places to feel loved and welcomed and Ziggy’s enthusiastic antics are delightful to her. He reminds her of her lovability and she relaxes in session as he lies on the couch next to her. Another client who is single after the break-up of a long term relationship and very much misses her partner strokes Ziggy’s soft hair as she talks about her longing for intimate connection with the person she lost. Another client who finds it hard to trust anybody and whose memories of her abusive childhood are hazy and scary, is reminded of her love of her childhood puppy by Ziggy’s happy company. Depressed clients often become more responsive and less withdrawn when Ziggy is there. Clients with high blood pressure report feeling calmer when they get to play with and stroke him.

Everybody needs something to hold and to love, and sometimes just for an hour a week, my rambunctious little dog helps some people reconnect with the loving optimistic place inside themselves.

Being Scared Of Spiders Sucks

I've been scared of them since I was about 8 years old, and I've tried every therapy known to humans in an attempt to overcome my phobia. My parents became creative at thinking up reasons for the sudden appearance of a never-before-seen phobia, but none of their reasons ever fit, and I haven't ever come up with a good enough reason of my own. Be that as it may, I went from an active tomboy who lived her life outside in the fields, to a child who wouldn't sit under a tree, on the grass or walk through fields in case spiders were to (a) drop on me (b) walk across me or (c) attach to me. Beginning at the age of 14 through to the present, I have endured (a) hypnosis (b) Cognitive Behavioral therapy (c) EMDR (d) Exposure therapy (e)myriad versions of "talk" therapy and (f) endless hours researching spiders, learning about spiders and trying to figure out why oh why I'm so darn scared of them. I am sad to report that I have no great insights. I have heard that the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at Boston University has some success with phobias, but it involves allowing them to set spiders free in your immediate vicinity and I'm not in any great hurry to agree to that torment, and pay for the privilege to boot!

However, over the years I'm a little less petrified than I was - there was a time when I would gag and/or faint if a spider came near me. I can now, on occasion, (and I'm not proud of this as I hate to harm any living thing, no matter how lowly) squish them if the clump of papertowels is big enough to "protect" me from the possibility of the spider escaping using its super-arachnid strength and leaping on me with its fangs out. (I didn't say this was a rational phobia, did I?) I can perform this cruel feat as long as the spider is not above me on the ceiling, or at least overhead in some fashion, and as long as it's not too furry and not too big. (Too big would be over half an inch across including legs, and dear readers even typing the word "legs" makes me feel like gagging.)

The reason I feel compelled to share about my spider phobia is that instead of getting an early night as I had intended, I was driven from the bedroom because a large spider crawled up the back of the bed and neither my spouse nor I were able to catch the wretched thing. One abortive attempt to catch the nimble critter ended up with the eight-legged horror dropping kamikaze-like from the ceiling onto my bedside table, from whence it disappeared into the night. We spent about half an hour looking for it to no avail. So, here I sit, trying to calm my nerves by writing about my phobia.

"How come you're a therapist and scared of spiders?" I hear you say. Good question. I've no idea. I'm pretty savvy about some things and a complete idiot about others. If you are having sexual problems, parenting problems, coming out issues, (and indeed just about anything related to sexual orientation) anxiety, depression and just plain feeling crummy, I can probably help.

If you're scared of spiders, forget it. But if you hear of a good therapist, be sure to let me know, okay?

I thought I would, from time to time, post items of interest with a “Sexuality In The News” focus.

The first news item concerns two sex offenders in Maine who were murdered on Easter Sunday by 20 year old Stephen Marshall of Nova Scotia, Canada. Marshall allegedly got the two men’s names (Robert Gray – 57 years old – and William Elliott – 24 years old) from the Maine Sex Offenders Registry (http://sor.informe.org/sor), drove to the men’s homes in his father’s pick-up truck and shot the men dead. When found and cornered by police on a Boston bus, Marshall turned the gun on himself.

Understandably, this event has created quite a ripple of fear amongst registered sex offenders, whose names, photos and addresses are increasingly posted on the internet by states as a matter of public record. The Maine legislature has promised to reconsider the way in which this information is posted online, but other elected officials are disinclined to change the current system. One Democratic state representative, Patricia Blanchette, said “Nobody want to see anybody cut any slack for pedophiles. Other people such as Tim App, a Northeastern University criminal justice professor, thinks that sex offender registries should not be available to the public, but be information privy to the police only. Mr. App thinks that there should be “intense counseling and supervision backed up with lie detector testing” in order to reintroduce pedophiles back into the mainstream.

While I am against the death penalty, and do not wish to see anybody punished for their crimes by loss of life, even at the hands of a civilian, I also do not believe that communities should be left uninformed about the presence of pedophiles living in their midst.

I am unaware of the numbers of pedophiles who are murdered by concerned citizens who take matters into their own hands. However, I have to believe that it is relatively small in relation to the numbers of child victims persecuted by pedophiles. On balance, I believe that sex offender registries should be available online, complete with names, photos and addresses. Adults have at least a chance at protecting themselves. Children have little or no chance to of defending themselves against sexual predators. Any information that we can employ to keep children safe surely has to be worth the loss of a sexual predator’s privacy.

Besotted with "Six Feet Under"

I've been turned on to the quirky, fabulousness of the HBO series (now defunct) "Six Feet Under," henceforth referred to as SFU. Thanks to the magic of Netflix, my current Big Love, I have been watching the series from the very beginning. While I didn't see it the first time around, I'm now onto Disc 2 of the Second Season (of which there are a total of 5 discs). With 4 seasons worth of discs to go (so, an estimated 20 DVD's still to plop through our mail slot) I'm in funereal heaven. As hokey as this sounds, I feel like I learn something important, either about the world or myself, with each episode that I watch. Some of the things that I've learned, feel like gems to slide into my back pocket which I will be able to produce when needed.

Watching the season also makes me realize how little thought I've given to the subject of death and dying. While I had rudimentary clinical training in grieving and loss, and have done a little reading of my own, I've lost very few people and I've never seen death, dying or a dead person up close. I've heard others accounts of seeing their dead relatives and loved ones, and these really stick with me. My oldest school friend lost her father when we were still in high school. I remember her describing how she leaned over him to look at him, and realized that his body was cold and like there was nobody in there. She said, "It's not like sleeping. He just was gone." This has obviously made an impact on me, because I remember it to this day. How on earth can somebody you love just be gone? It boggled my mind.

While I don't have anything deep and profound to say right now, particularly as it's Saturday morning and I'm at my desk, while my darling granddaughter bounces up and down on the daybed in my study with her new doll (a so-called "Groovy Doll" with pink streaks in her hair and matching sleeping bag!) one episode in particular stands out in my mind so far.

For those of you who have never seen SFU, it follows the relationships between members of a family whose patriarch has just died, and who are getting on with the business of trying not to screw up their lives while running a funeral parlor. Each episode begins with the death of an anonymous person, whose loved ones end up at the funeral parlor. One particular episode begins with the death of a baby. The normally un-flusterable embalmer at the funeral parlor, a handsome young man called Frederico, finds himself frozen and unable to embalm the baby (his own wife is pregnant with their second child). As the plot unravels, one of the protagonists makes the point that we have words to describe a woman who has lost her husband (widow), a word to describe a husband who has lost his wife (widower) and a word to describe a child whose parents have died (orphan) but there is no word to describe a parent who has lost a child. This event is quite literally unspeakable, with no words to describe the trauma of the loss of a child's life. As somebody who loves to read, who relishes words and how they roll off your tongue, the idea that a human event, a human experience, cannot even be described froze me. But it also helps me to understand why people grieving the loss of children have such a difficult time finding places to grieve thoroughly. As a culture, we cannot even come up with words for them to use as descriptors. Even listening to people's grief is unspeakable to us in Western cultures. I wonder if other cultures have words to describe the state of having lost a child. Anbody know?

Computer Rick

Yep, you're right. This happened at the same time last year, with a different computer.

I have a virus on my Laptop at the office. It jumbles up all my files. It types in capitals when "Caps Lock" is not activated. It won’t allow me to punctuate, and keeps freezing blocks of text so that I accidentally delete them while doing something as simple as hitting the space bar. It tries to mail merge Excel documents every time I boot up. Even more annoying is the fact that Mr Virus has decided that rapidly scrolling down through hundreds and thousands of blank pages is the most fun, refusing to allow me to halt his frenzied journey. Somehow it mixes up client names on my address list, has moved addresses and phone numbers into baffling combinations, and sends me error messages that my internet connection is not viable, even as I sit listening to that annoying dial-tone and cacophony of squeaks so familiar to dial-up users. (I have cable at home, and dial-up at work where I spend little or no time on the internet.) It's impossible to type up my clinical notes at the end of the day so I have spent the last week hand writing these (my writing is indecipherable, and I'm not sure I will be able to read them again!).

Enough already.

In desperation, I called my computer guy (known as “Computer Rick” on his business cards) to ask him if he could rescue me from compu-hell. But he is taking his family and going to El Salvador for 3 months, so I’m out of luck. Yes, I know. It’s easy enough to update my virus software, but I like it when Rick comes and fixes my computers. He worked wonders on the computers at my home. It’s not rocket science to download new virus definitions, but Computer Rick installed SpyDoctor and BitDefender on my home computer and also cleaned up the computers so they run like clockwork.

Not only does he provide a much-needed service for my business, I also really like him as a person. Rick is in his late 30’s/early 40’s. He has sandy hair, fair skin and is shy and awkward in the way that computer techie types often are. He has two daughters who are young teens and a wife he’s devoted to. He is happy in his life, enjoys his work, loves his family and has lived an interesting and varied life.

The first time Rick and I met, we were discussing housing and I happened to mention how much I love American Log Cabins. On my first ever trip to the USA in 1982, I was here on vacation and stayed with a friend who lived in a log cabin in northern Duluth, MI. Despite the fact that she was without running water and electricity and lived 50 miles from the nearest store, I loved staying there and relished waking up every morning to the wooden "walls" and rustic charm of her lovely cabin. To my surprise, Rick said that he had built several of them in his life time; in fact he still owns two of them on land in upstate New York. Listening to him as he waxed rhapsodic about how to build log cabins was a thing of beauty!

The second thing I admired and enjoyed hearing about was the way he and his wife (who is a pre-school teacher) have gone about raising their daughters. For example, several years ago, they decided that they wanted their daughters to have the experience of living in a different culture. They sold everything they owned (which wasn’t much) and moved to El Salvador. Rick said, “You know, people say that El Salvadoreans are poor and yes, they don’t have any money. But they have closeness and connection to their friends, family and the land they live on and farm and this makes them rich, much richer than urban Americans ever can be.” He went on to talk about how his values and those of his whole family shifted after living there for several years, and how differently he views his life in the US as a result. The relationships he formed with people have endured and they regularly go back to spend time with their friends there.

When Rick asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a sex therapist, he blushed a deep vermilion red. His only comment was, "Oh boy, that must be an interesting job." And then he buried his head in my computer's innards. Despite his shyness, he is easy to talk to and I relish these opportunities throughout my working days to connect with other folks.

Call me crazy, but I can’t bring myself to call “Computer Geeks” when I have a loyalty to, and connection with, Rick, a real person who shows up at my home and in my office, bringing the world with him.

(PS If you live in the Boston area and would like Computer Rick's phone number, let me know!)

Transamerica

This weekend my friend, D, came to have dinner with us and to watch a movie. We had rented "Transamerica" from Netflix. I had heard that Felicity Huffman did an amazing acting job playing a Transexual woman. She did. I think this part has done for Felicity Huffman what "Monster" did for Charlize Theron. The acting was nuanced, brave and totally believable. What was also incredible was that a movie with the title “Transamerica,” with the main protagonist being a transsexual woman and her search for serenity and integrity of Self, should end up being a uniquely human movie about the power of love, the challenge of being oneself in the context of family, how we grow into being parents and what it means to live an authentic life. In fact, quite early on in the film, it becomes irrelevant whether Bree is transgendered or not. Her most important evolution in the film is not to do with her gender identity, but her ability to grow into authenticity in her relationship to herself and her son.

Okay, having said all that, what is one of my biggest beefs with some movies?

Stupid therapists. Here was another one. Margaret, Bree’s therapist, breaks most boundaries known to psychotherapists and their clients.

The treatment plan between therapist and client exists as an agreement about how therapy will proceed. The therapist and Bree clearly have an agreement about the therapist signing off on Bree’s gender reassignment surgery (GRS). Without any discussion, Margaret rescinds this agreement because she disapproves of Bree’s decisions concerning her newly discovered son. This decision should have been part of a longer conversation between therapist and client, particularly as Bree’s surgery is already scheduled. While it is a wonderful idea to encourage clients to work through old and life-restricting feelings originating from their families of origin, I have yet to hear of any reassignment surgery (and it’s certainly NOT in the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care!) that has a requirement of this work being undertaken prior to surgery. In fact, if this requirement were on the books, absolutely nobody would qualify for surgery!

It is unconscionable for a therapist to force their agenda onto their client, which is precisely what Margaret does when insisting that Bree tackle the relationship with her son, as a prerequisite for her signature. In addition, Bree’s statement that Margaret is her “only friend” is revealing. Indeed, it quickly becomes clear that Bree is almost completely without friends and family, living a solitary life in her small apartment, and therefore her relationship with her therapist unquestionably takes center stage in her life as her important relationship. While it might arguably be appropriate for a friend to change their minds about an agreement without discussion, it is never okay for a therapist to do so. Margaret appears to have lost sight of clinical process that she feels able to do this. It is an example of what can happen to the relationship between therapist and client when the therapist “forgets” the nature of the relationship. Friends can afford to change their minds. Therapists cannot.

While hugging a client occasionally is not a bad thing, sitting next to them on the couch, holding their hands, and stroking their face while calling them “sweetie” is definitely crossing a therapeutic line in the sand. Need I say more? Movies are very influential in how people view other groups. There is enough confusion already about the nature of the therapeutic relationship, and to my mind this film could add to that bewilderment. The obvious caring and compassion that her therapist displays towards her client, Bree, is heart-warming and not to be dismissed as an important prerequisite for the work that any therapist undertakes with a client. What is more, suggesting that her client undertake the difficult work of reconciling with her identity as a parent and offering to illuminate the path so that this work happens is a sound clinical recommendation.

Requiring it is not.

Single Therapist

I have a truly wonderful friend, who is a licensed psychologist and a neuropsychologist and who has several professional specialties, one of which is interviewing inmates and then writing forensic reports for these incarcerated felons. She spends more time visiting high security prisons than anybody I know, but truly enjoys the work and has fascinating stories to tell of what it's like in prison. My friend is beautiful, intellligent, funny, generous, fascinating and sexy. She's also a buddhist, Italian born ("Roma!")....and she's single and has been for a long time. I look at her and think that it's nothing short of a crime that she's SO single. My spouse and I are currently having work done on our home, and have a fabulous woman carpenter doing the work for us. While I was busy in my study, the carpenter was in and out, painting closets, caulking holes, plastering, painting and generally beautifying our house. I told her about my friend, and asked if she had any ideas for a blind date for my friend? After chatting for a few minutes, the carpenter asked what my friend did for a living. "She's a psychologist," I replied. "Ah, well," said the carpenter, "that's your problem right there! People shy away from being involved with them! Intrigued, I asked her why. "Everybody thinks they're crazy!" said the carpenter with great conviction. No further information was forthcoming from the carpenter. But her reply has intrigued me. I can see why it would be challenging to be romantically partnered with a therapist. If the rest of them are anything like me, I just can't seem to shut off my brain. Even if I'm not saying therapist kinds of things, I'm definitely thinking them. I can't be the only therapist who has to constantly stop him or herself from jumping in with an annoyingly empathic or supposedly insightful comment. I do censor myself, I promise. But it's a hard habit to break.

I have several friends (and clients) who are single and they tell horror stories of what they go through in their search for their mates. Of course, to off-set that, I have countless friends (and clients) who are in relationships that give them grief and misery and who question their participation in coupledom almost daily.

But back to why it's scary to be in a relationship with a therapist.

I think this deserves a Top Ten List. Anybody care to help me compile one? I’ll get things started.

10. We over-analyze everything.

Any takers for #9?