Choice Theory (32 page)

I’ll take a chance and give her the answer she’s looking for but give it in a way that shows I don’t think she’s been ruined for life. She is a talker, and that’s good; she’s easy to know and she opened up quickly. She wants happiness; relationships are important to her. She seems comfortable with me, and I feel comfortable with her. I can feel that what I think about what happened is very important to her. I’ve got to come across to her as someone who doesn’t think that what she went through has damaged her permanently.

“You’re here because of your childhood. You had bad experiences with men, and your mother didn’t protect you. You think that’s what I’m looking for—that that’s the reason you don’t trust men. Well, I agree; I think that’s the reason. But it’s not the cause. The abuse is over. If you read the pop magazines, you get the message that you’re supposed to be messed up for good if you’ve been sexually abused unless a therapist can fix you. Right now, that’s what everyone believes. Do you think you’re messed up for good?”

“Well, it must have done something, I’ve been messed up with men ever since. I came here to get unmessed.”

“Suppose I told you that I can’t do anything about what happened.”

“Then maybe I’d better see someone else.”

“You want to go back through all that happened, all that helpless bottled-up feeling again? Wasn’t one trip through it enough?”

“I’m just supposed to forget about it, as if it never happened?”

“I’m not saying that. You know it happened. Remember it as long as you like. I’m asking you to forget what you’ve read that you have to do about it. It was terrible, but it’s over. Do you think it’s going to happen again? If you think it’s going to happen again, then I would advise you to keep thinking about it, to be on your guard.”

“It’s not going to happen again. But it did happen and it’s got me all messed up.”

“How? Tell me how it’s gotten you all messed up.”

“With this guy, the way I act.”

“The way you choose to act. Why do you think you choose to act this way?”

“Because of what happened to me. I keep telling you that. Didn’t you listen to what I said?”

“What happened to you isn’t messing you up with Tom. It’s your choosing to keep thinking about it that’s messing you up.”

“But I can’t help thinking about it?”

“I’m not sure of that. You think about it because you’re afraid to trust a man, to trust Tom. What good does that do? Is Tom like those other guys? What happened is not permanently stuck in your brain; you choose to think about it. What good will it do you to push Tom away?”

“But that’s it; it is stuck in my brain. I can’t help it. You’re supposed to get it out.”

Now she’s talking about it, but she’s not getting any help from me to keep thinking about it. She can see that it’s not as important to me as she thought it would be. That’s got her a little puzzled and a little angry. I’ve got to convince her that she can stop thinking about it only by doing something different with Tom. If she keeps doing the same thing with him that she’s done with the others, she’ll never get it out of her head. If I go back through all the abuse, all her feelings about the men and her mother, a lot may come up that she doesn’t want to deal with. It’s not at all what she thinks: get it out and then it goes away. It’s the opposite. The past doesn’t intrude on the present unless we choose to hold on to it. Later, when she reads some choice theory and I explain it to her, she’ll understand. But now I have to teach her to be careful but to take a chance and trust this guy. If she can, she’ll find out that her past has not damaged her. It is her thinking about it now and her choice not to trust men that is causing her difficulty and that I can help her to stop. I answer her last request about helping her get it out.

“I think I can if you’ll help me. When are you going to see Tom again?”

“Tomorrow night we’re going to see a movie. He picks them; I like the ones he picks.”

“After the movie, where do you go?”

“My apartment. That’s why I’m so broke, I have a nice apartment.”

“If you do what you usually choose to do, do you start picking on him at the movie or do you wait till you get home?”

More and more I’m introducing
choose
and
choice.
They are very empowering words that help us all to understand that no matter what happened in the past, we can still make a better choice today. The men who abused her are not waiting around to do it again. They are waiting only in her mind. The idea of choosing can help her choose to get them out.

“We’ll go to a late-afternoon show and then come to my place and make dinner together. He’s the chef, but I help. I start in after dinner a little; then I really get after him right before we make love. Like I said, the bitching gets me in the mood. He senses that’s what I’m doing and appreciates the lovemaking that goes along with it, but I don’t think he likes it. It’s a little bizarre, and I’ll lose him if I don’t stop. Nuts like me are fun for a while but not fun enough to get serious with.”

“You say the bitching gets you in the mood for sex. But do you like the bitching itself? If you could have good sex without it, how would that be?”

“I don’t know. Good sex is important. It’s not that easy to have good sex, at least for me it isn’t.”

“I asked you, do you like the bitching? I know it makes the sex better.”

“Of course, I don’t like it. I’m going to lose him if I keep it up.”

“When you held it in the other night, even though the sex wasn’t that good for you, was it OK for him?”

“I guess so. I don’t think he noticed that much. I made up my mind to put on a good act. I think a lot of woman are good actresses. When there’re no customers at night, I read
Cosmopolitan.
I know all the things to do, and they work.”

“Do you want him to change?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to like it when you pick on him. To be able to tell you that if it makes the sex good for you, it’s OK with him. Is good sex all you want from this guy?”

That question got to the heart of her dilemma. Sex she could
handle. That was easy, but she wanted more. She wanted to trust him enough so she could love him without all the testing and game playing. Love was her problem, and I was getting close. I didn’t say anything, I just waited.

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“Why maybe, why don’t you know?”

“Because that’s sick; there’s something wrong with that. He shouldn’t have to put up with that from me. He’s never treated me badly.”

“Why shouldn’t he have to put up with it? Men have treated you like shit. He’s just a man. What do you care what he has to put up with if it’s better for you?”

“Because he’s not just any man. He hasn’t treated me like shit. He treats me better than I treat him.”

“OK, I’m a therapist. I’ll listen to anything you want to say. Do you still want to tell me about the men who abused you? About your mother who should have protected you? About how you dealt with that situation? If you do, I’ll listen.”

Now she had to think. She had just admitted that this present guy was a good guy. I could see this was quite an admission. Now I was giving her a chance to tell me all about the bad guys, about her mother. What they had done that she could never change. Maybe what she had done that she could never change.

“But don’t you have to know what happened?”

“I know what happened. You know what happened. If it will help you, I’ll listen. But don’t tell me because you think I need to know. You’ve told me enough; I don’t have to hear any more.”

There was a long pause. What I said was sinking in.

“Can I see you again?”

“You’ve got nine more visits.”

“You don’t think I’m all fucked up.”

“It’s over. If you keep thinking about it, you’re fucking yourself up. You’ve met a nice guy. Be careful, but give him a chance. You’ve had your head screwed on backward for fifteen years. It’s enough.”

“Some very bad things happened.”

“I’m sure they did. But is anything very bad happening now that you haven’t told me? I mean now with this guy. Have you been holding anything back?”

“No.”

“What if he drops you? He might, you know.”

“It’s not going to happen right away. It’s later I’m worried about.”

“Do you feel better?”

“I feel a little strange. I think it’s better.”

“I’ll see you next week. This time OK? You can call me anytime.”

Terri feels strange because she’s getting rid of the way she’s been thinking since she was nine years old to deal with the abuse and its aftermath. All this time, she’s been convinced that her inability to get along with men is the result of what her abusers did to her. In this first session, I’ve helped her to become aware that the actual abuse is over. What is keeping it alive is how she is choosing to deal with those memories. It’s this new awareness that feels so strange. She’ll have some relapses, but if she can keep thinking in this direction, she can begin to gain effective control over a part of her life where she’s never had it. She can choose to stop treating all men as if they are potentially abusive. This guy may drop her, but he is unlikely to abuse her. She may have to find someone else, but the next man may get better treatment from the start, and that will help. She has a lot to offer. If she’s cautious but learns to trust again, some good guy, maybe Tom, will stick with her.

In future sessions, we’ll talk about choice theory and we’ll talk about how to use the book. A lot of the next nine sessions will be devoted to how much, even with her childhood, she has already done for herself and how she may go further. Maybe she’ll move up into management; she’s really into the supermarket business. I’ll help her to figure out how to get along better with her mother, whom she has never removed from her quality world and whom she now pities more than blames. Mothers are the first to come and the last to go from our quality worlds.

Suppose she had come to me with the same problem but no recollection of ever being abused. Would I try to dredge up a memory that I suspected she had repressed? I would not for the following reasons. First, I don’t believe that we can repress the memories of abuse, neglect, or rejection if it occurred after age three or four, and hers started at nine, especially if she is in a counseling situation where she feels safe. The need to survive would keep those threatening memories accessible. If it had started when she was two and ended at three, it might have been forgotten. Even if I suspected that this is what happened, I would not search for that memory. I would focus on what was going on now because that, not the abuse, is the problem she has to solve. It would be better if the man she is with now is worth loving. But part of what I’ll try to teach her is how to recognize the difference between a good man and a creep.

With a client who was having a sexual difficulty but reported no previous abuse, her lack of trust would lead me to look for an abusive man in her life right now or recently. Again, I would focus on what was unsatisfying about her present relationship or relationships and not try to dredge up the past. If her present relationship was abusive, it would come out. If she had been abused in the past but would not admit it to me, it would be up to her to bring it up. If she did, I’d treat her like I treated Terri. If she didn’t, I’d treat her like I treated Terri minus the abuse. Therapy should always move forward, never backward. Because Freud did it that way doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it. I would still ask the question about trust because no matter what did or didn’t happen, that is where she is now.

Regardless of what has happened to us, choice theory does not focus on the past as the cause of our present difficulties. Many clients want to stay in the past. They are afraid to deal with the present problem and are happy to escape into the past to find someone to blame for their present unhappiness. It is the job of the therapist to ferret out this present problem, not to go into the
safe
past. I say
safe
because clients use the past to avoid facing what is really happening in their lives now. Many female clients
are unwilling to face the fact that a present male friend or husband is treating them badly and look to the past, his or their own, to avoid dealing with an unpleasant present that they would have to do something about now.

The present problem is much more accessible than trying to recover memories of things that may never have happened. When a person goes to a traditional therapist who is trained to focus on the past and keeps probing for what may have happened that is causing the present problem, the client is often more than willing to help the therapist do so. To blame is much easier than to choose to change. Too many adult clients have been so convinced that they can’t deal with their present misery until they can recover a forgotten memory of childhood abuse. Unfortunately, what they do “recover” is a false memory of abuse that never happened. This
memory
has been created by the client’s creative system to try to please the therapist and/or to avoid dealing with the present. Neither the client nor anyone else has any way to know that it is not a true memory. To the client, it seems as if it happened. That is how our creative systems work. In my dream, I was really an astronaut.

The false memory may be even more real to the client than if the event had actually happened because it is fresh from the client’s creative system and tailored to what he or she wants now. This is why so many clients believe it happened and are so distressed when the memory is proved false. There is no difference between this kind of a memory and a delusion. It was created in an effort to satisfy a need or needs and seems as real to the client as if it had actually happened.

These delusional memories are a common phenomenon in court, when witnesses create perceptions to fit particular cases rather than recall what they actually saw. The witnesses may be trying to satisfy their need to belong or their need for power. We should never rely on any memory that cannot be verified because there is no way to find out if it is real or created. Memories that are elicited under hypnosis or drugs can be equally faulty. There is nothing in hypnosis or drugs that makes a memory more truthful
than what is remembered or forgotten without the use of these procedures. At times drugs and hypnosis can actually encourage the person to remember what didn’t happen. Just because these exotic procedures are used becomes a powerful suggestion that something must have happened. When the client gives in to that suggestion, it is a short step for his or her creative system to take over and provide what he or she believes must be there. There is also no truth serum; that is another external control fantasy.