Fantasy impromptu #8: Three existential guys

Part 1

Progress note: “This is an ‘existential’ client, confused about his nature, his feelings, his meaning, his goals. With such an abstruse problem, it is understandable that his way of expressing himself is vague, tentative, childlike, intellectualized.” In fact, I had two such existential clients at the same time, one late twenties, one early thirties, both “lost-boyish”-looking, both with solider wives than they, both still weak-kneed from their childhood.*

What would Yalom do?

When clients are floaty in their head from the “who am I?” or “what am I?” problem, do you keep them in their head, their thoughts, or point to the ground?

What will be the ground?

The body’s feeling through their history, all the way down to childhood, infancy, birth.

That makes sense, in a way. Imagine this ludicrous analogy: A nine-year-old’s beloved pet puppy has been struck by a car and killed. In extreme distress, he gets lost in his head: “Oh no! I want to cry. Should I? What if Waggles is in heaven and is happy now? What if this is God’s will? My dad is frowning – I’d better not cry. It’s embarrassing to cry! If I start, it won’t stop! No – I’m angry! What should I feel? What do I feel?” Obviously the answer is that he should be real and cry.

But what about our client who has lost his moorings, his oneness with his first feelings, decades ago? Now his body’s felt sense and his heady question mark are interchangeable and nothing lands anywhere.

Here is the problem that doesn’t want to be named in psychotherapy. Many, many, many people land nowhere.

Part 2

Today’s client was triggered by, of all things, the concept of “splitting off and projecting.” I had disclosed some elusive, early soul murder of humiliation that got projected into all people: Were I to say something even slightly negative or rejecting or hurtful to someone, he would die. His heart would be crushed, his knees would buckle, he would die in the bleakest despair. Listening, the client was struck by images and disembodied memories of awful humiliation. He began to shake. His face blanched, suffered. He screamed terribly several times, worrying me. The truth was coming up from his stomach to his chest, to his throat. I handed him the waste basket. He dry-heaved, maybe a little wet. It should have been everything – everything should have come up – but there are assuredly constraints in my ‘vibe’ and in the thin walls of the room.

When it was over, he no longer floated. “For the first time, I feel that I am here! I am in the room with you, not in my head.” He felt landed on earth for the first time, as I had when I fell through to this place twenty-five years ago.

Some people land somewhere.

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* While this is a subject for past and future blog posts, it is true that most clients are existentially impaired as their essential or underlying problem, not possessed of a discrete disorder such as depression or narcissistic personality. Who am I? is a common spoken or unspoken question.Therefore, I have dozens of “existential” clients, not three.