The Gentle Healer – Part I

When you’re suffocating it is not important why, you just need air.

It was early evening, toward the end of summer. In the parking lot, shortly before my first psychotherapy session, I opened a beer and had a smoke. I was in no mood to talk. After a few minutes, I finished the second beer and squashed the cigarette butt with the heel of my work boot. They both went down easy, and tasted good, but neither fortified my fragile resolve. A third brew might help, but I decided to wait—I was already late.

I placed the remaining cans of Budweiser in the brown bag they came in. The pack of cigarettes slid into the shirt pocket of my Coca Cola uniform. Therapy over beer and cigarettes seemed like a good idea.

I’d just finished the day shift delivering Coca Cola products to markets and liquor stores in the San Gabriel Valley – a summer job while enrolled in graduate school – and now trudged off to meet with the doctoral intern who would be my assigned psychotherapist.

I was a second-year grad student on track to earn a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in psychology, but I preferred playing four-wall handball and pick-up basketball games at the local YMCA to attending classes.

The upstart, rebellious, and defiant behaviors had been noticed, and a plan for assisting me set in place. My professors, all seven of them, had met privately before meeting with me individually. It was in those separate conferences when I was informed that I would be dropped from the program unless I engaged in individual therapy (I was given two referrals), attended class and maintained a “B” in all of my courses.

After I walked in, brown bag in hand, Bill introduced himself, ushered me into his office, and motioned for me to have a seat by the window.

Climbing through it occurred to me.

He took a seat in a chair directly in front of me.

I lit a cigarette, you could smoke anywhere in those days, offered him a beer, he shook his head, then opened one for myself.

Behind the brash, attitude-filled client was something else, though what that was I didn’t know. I could feel control slipping away from me as Bill sat quietly in his chair.

And so began my first experience, as a client, in the gentle practice of psychotherapy. I didn’t finish that beer, light another cigarette, or immediately respond to his engaging question: “Tell me about why you’ve come to see me.” Instead, I looked out the window where a late-summer alpenglow began to stretch across the San Gabriel Mountains.

I don’t recall how long we sat in silence, but I eventually began to speak about my crumbling marriage, my academic shortcomings, and the frustrating experience of being me.

We worked together for a year, his last before receiving his doctorate and moving on. He was instrumental in helping me implement a program of study habits and class attendance that worked. And though we delved into other areas of brokenness, explorations I resisted even after inviting him in, our focus remained on the practical issues related to being a successful graduate student.

I began to look forward to those sessions even as I was stonewalling efforts to dig deeper, and I never again brought beer and cigarettes to our therapy sessions. What he began to unveil was the hurt in my soul, a description that didn’t occur to me until much later. I’ll always be grateful to Bill for helping me move beyond that façade of psychological toughness, and introducing me to the gentle art of psychotherapy.

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