The chair at the beginning of the world (with Update)

This was a 16-year-old tall, strong young man who cut himself sometimes, overdosed twice and whose head was weighted down by dark, deathly thoughts. He was growing up with no father, an angry and brutal older brother, and a mother who apparently lived on the sidelines. Otherwise the brother couldn’t have gotten away with so much bullying and denigrating.

The young man “spaced out” quite a bit, which got in the way of school performance and even sports: intermittent focus. On the couch he looked serious, and half there. He described, or rather labeled, the brother with one- and two-word terms: “dick,” “real bastard.” These were his known, established facts. When he said them, I had the feeling of a betrayed person, the sense that he was visiting a neglected basement room of his museum, with a treasure ignored, his past now gauchely in the present.

Then I asked him to put his brother in the Empty Chair.

Silence, heavy stagnant silence.

Therapists have to see this wasn’t being resistant, tongue-tied or in a “bad mood.” This was sudden merciless history: the weight of twelve years of suppression, fear, grief, and the more recent tragedy of loss of himself. To talk to his brother would have been to say: “Everything failed. I am still there.” Or actually, it would have been facial expressions and tears: five-year-old’s tears and 16-year-old’s tears together: tongue-tied, body-tied, time-tied.

I probably wouldn’t have asked him to go there, had I known how truthful that chair was.

So we can picture what his here-and-now is: Pure burden with no good reason. His voice was stuck in the past. His attention gone, and when it was here, that was painful. He would need to regress, with me and his mother, who herself would need to be enlightened.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Update, June 7, 2020. This young man continued in therapy for another eight months. He turned out to be one of my most serene and pretty much happy young clients. And I’m not sure what happened, other than “the relationship.” His mother never joined his therapy. He became a strong, almost laughably extremely strong confronter of his brother. He never became a high-achieving student, by intent (!). That is, he knew just how much work to put in to get by. Because he had other plans – two-fold plans: have fun with his hippie van, music, friends and travels, and learn his uncle's solid trade. I smile just thinking of this kid.