Her dark universe

 

A 23-year-old woman texts: “I only blame people who have made mistakes and that’s ok. People are not perfect and neither am I. But I can’t blame myself because I’ve tried every single thing I could to have a family. But no matter what I do or how I do it, they blame me and make me the black sheep when all I wanted was their love and respect. I’m never good enough and at this point I never will be.” A 17-year-old texts: “I feel like nothing I do is right. It’s always my fault. I mean, that’s what is told to me every day of life so it has to be true . . . I’m the cause of every­thing, even my depression.”

I do not like Cognitive Therapy in any of its barely distinguish­able forms. And yet when I hear young people univer­salize and go in extremis like this, paint everything dark, the urge to yank them up and out of it is inexor­able. I texted the 23-year-old: “Ok, but watch out for ‘catas­tro­phiz­ing’ and expand­ing feelings and problems to the full length and width of the universe. If you do that, there’s no room for anything else.” To the teenager: “Untrue, Boo-Boo. Watch out for ‘catas­tro­phizing’ – exaggerating cat poop into dinosaur poop.” Young woman’s response: “Ok.” Teen: “Yeah, I don’t know. Lately I’ve been feeling that I’m drowning and each day I’ve been sinking deeper and the farther I go the less people hear that I’m screaming for help which you are right is probably just an exaggeration of the worst.”

What would Freud do? Maybe this is an occasion for a new set of Gloria films, the clas­sic demo of impotence by three legendary potentates: Albert Ellis, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls. Sigmund would have been far better, discovering the unconscious injury of these youngsters, but mostly pontificating his theory of id or death, or finding their thoughts to be projection or dis­place­ment or some other defense mechanism.

The modern answer? The Pessimistic Shrink answer? It is too late to change their child­hoods to secure, loving and happy. They were hurt in their growing up years, possibly in infancy, possibly prior to birth (the first nine months). Deaf parenting, unaddressed pain travel the years, by trauma train, eventually disembarking in a land of decision: Everyone is against me or I am a defect. We may think such a decision is harmful, but imagine the child, instead, having a positive thought that denies her feel­ing: “I know they really love me. I just can’t feel it.” Or imagine her having no thought at all, just feeling: amorphous, all-life-in-one feeling. That’s the place that, if adults were to descend to it, would cause mas­sive col­lapse, regression, meltdown, insanity. Pain cannot hold itself up. So maybe a negative, global attitude is all she can have right now.

A good therapist to a teen wants to be her hidden, real parent while knowing this will not happen. We ride the train with her, bringing along a bag of hope. There are few other good options.