Trifle #2: Sigmund Fred, or Freddy Krueger?

Here is a mystery I may never solve.

I am, as one would expect of a therapist, “color blind” to new clients: All receive the same good will, interest and help-offering manner. By this control group-quality consistency, I can definitively say there is one cohort that predictably rejects me primarily on their own account not mine, and in a special way: They quit therapy following Intake or after the first couple sessions, hide behind their living room couch and call front office to be transferred to another therapist.

Youngish single girl-women age 22 to 27, I say . . . “Boo!!”

You are wanting a magical answer. You are wanting a simple instruction list to solve your morbid grief or your ADHD personality or your trauma. You are wanting Girl Power warmth. You are dishonest when I ask your reason via text-message, if you offer a reason at all.

Alas, caught up in work, binge tv and bitter bile, I generally do not follow through with their request, and they fade into the sunset.*

One effervescent tongue-wagger decided she might prefer someone with an LGBTQ specialty. But she didn’t know I didn’t have that specialty. Two others were mum about their displeasure.

You are not wanting an earnest, sensitive, aesthetic-looking old nerd man. You are not wanting someone who intimates that your family may have anything, any little thing, to do with your problem or pain. You may not like that therapy has to do with change. You are frightened, thin-skinned, possibly promiscuous, possibly party drinking too much. I’ve worked with fifteen- and sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls who are tougher than you – meaning: more willing to feel the truth.

What is there about that female zone – 22 to 27, single – that is ready to run? I would be pleased to hear theories from readers. I can only guess that this is a precarious plateau. Earlier, they leaped into adult life with a certain energy, including exploratory energy. The adolescent persona was dissolving. Later, 28 on, they’ve steeled themselves with the mature lobotomization of adulthood. But in that long middle crucible there are pulls back to father and growing alienation with mother, misgivings about sexual behavior, questions that should have been answered when younger that leave fear residue; identity invisibility and a sense of directionlessness. I’m a man, but 26 is when I had my one and only molten-hot depressive anxiety existence attack. The only answer for me was to blink, get oblivious and move on. Maybe the last thing these young women should be doing at that moment is questioning themselves. I believe there is such a thing as unraveling. They may sense it if they stayed in my room.

I have to assume that most clinicians keep this group for natural terms of therapy, that they have the tendency to not ask the wrong questions. I don’t know.

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* This is technically allowable. Given no reason for seeking a transfer, I can’t know to whom to send the client.