Pandemic journal entry #3: Probably final dribs and drabs re: teletherapy

*  I have noticed, to my slightly unpleasant surprise, that I am more gracious, warm, and happy on-screen than I am in my office. Why? Several reasons. One, I am almost abjectly grateful to have teletherapy clients, and this brings out my ardor and care. Two, there is an instinctive need for more personality via screen than is required in the office: personality to draw out the useful intensity (or maybe to compensate for the lack of it) that is more naturally magical in the voodoo of the room and which is somewhat bleached out by the electronic medium. And three, I contain one ounce of Asperger’s-like out-of-sync-ness with individuals (and three pounds of it for broad humanity), which holds me in very subtle reserve in face-to-face encounters. I can be fuller, so to speak, when distant by screen, in the same way that your Real Self would text a puerile emoji to someone while you wouldn’t make a similarly ridiculous face in person.

*  I’ve mentioned this recently: These sessions are almost always powerful. This continues to surprise me, as my instinct says we shouldn’t be able to do so well while we’re comfortably lounging in our man cave in our little castle, without having flossed or applied deodorant. There is, it seems, a greater galvanizing of mood and investigative thought, in me and in the client. One man, drug addicted and somewhat immature, found his thoughts leading him to a completely unique felt-insight epiphany about the cause of his life of self-medication. He had always thought of himself only as a drug-dependent person, but the revelation now encompassed all the ways he had numbed and escaped himself throughout his life. His sense of stunned discovery and the whirring of his psycho-spiritual gears were excitingly palpable to me. We both sat in a beautiful volatile silence for many minutes.

*  And, I’m a little regretful that somewhere between a third and a half of my client list decided not to go to teletherapy. As I wrote before, I won’t beg or send out any more advertisements. All clients must be either respected or accepted (not necessarily both) for the person they are. Those gone are handling their life well enough according to their own definitions.

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