She tells me a story I have heard before.\u00a0 She is in an abusive relationship.\u00a0 She can always sense it\/feel it coming.\u00a0 When she does, she provokes him to explode and get it over with.\u00a0 It is not the attack and beating that she can’t stand, that she wants to get over with.\u00a0 It is the feeling\/sensations mounting inside of her that she wants to short-circuit and flee from.\u00a0 If he beats her, the feeling inside her goes away.\u00a0 She experiences relief.\u00a0 Relief until the next time.\u00a0 There is always a next time.<\/p>\n
As I listen to her, I can feel the terror inside her building–\u00a0she can’t tolerate it, sit with it\u00a0or contain it.\u00a0 It flows over and into me and\u00a0it is almost too much for me.\u00a0 It is visceral.\u00a0 Pure bodily sensation.\u00a0 Beyond words.\u00a0 Perhaps before words.<\/p>\n
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this story.\u00a0 It seems too many to count.\u00a0 The experience is always the same for me.\u00a0 A nauseating, sickening, shocking sensation in the pit of my stomach.\u00a0 I have heard it spoken from victims of domestic violence, from children that have been abused, sexually and physically.\u00a0 It seems their only defense is to control the feeling inside by provoking their abuser to get it over with.\u00a0 Then the feeling inside goes away, recedes for a time.\u00a0 Until the next time.\u00a0 There is always a next time.<\/p>\n
But what is this terror, this unworldly experience?\u00a0 I used to think of it in terms of the concept of predator-prey.\u00a0 The primal experience of being hunted, chased, stalked.\u00a0 Or Melanie Klein’s concept of the fear of annihilation.\u00a0 But these concepts are not able to capture or contain the experience.\u00a0 In fact, I don’t think words can describe the experience, it can only be experienced.\u00a0 And once you have experienced it, you will never be the same.\u00a0 It\u00a0 will change you forever.\u00a0 Shake you to your roots.\u00a0 It will haunt you as it waits in the recesses of your mind waiting to return.<\/p>\n
One root of the word terror is a Greek word for tremble.\u00a0 It may be that this is closer to what I am attempting to write about that can’t be written about.\u00a0 It can’t be written about because it is experienced in the body, not the mind.\u00a0 The mind cannot even conceive of this experience.\u00a0 It is inconceivable, beyond thoughts and words.\u00a0 In fact, when experienced, one loses their mind, their thoughts and all that remains is overwhelming physical sensations, shock and panic\u00a0that you want to flee from.<\/p>\n
Perhaps terror is so intolerable because it is not verbal.\u00a0 It can’t be thought about, it can only be felt.\u00a0 It is pure bodily sensation.<\/p>\n
And yet, perhaps the fact that it is wordless, beyond words, beyond mind, just pure sensation is the reason why it is so devastating.<\/p>\n
How do you digest\/tolerate\/process the unthinkable–what can’t be thought about.\u00a0 The horribleness of the experience.\u00a0 Is this why some deny the existence of the Holocaust?\u00a0 It was just too horrible to think about?\u00a0 Is this experience at the root of what happens to people who go to war and have to return home carrying the horribleness of their experiences?\u00a0 Is this what happens to police officers, paramedics\u00a0and surgeons and staff who work in emergency rooms and ICU’s?\u00a0 Too much terror and horror to stand\/process?<\/p>\n
We pride ourselves on out ability to think and digest experiences.\u00a0 But what if there are some experiences that are just too much for our minds?\u00a0 What if there are some experiences that we can’t process or digest, only experience.\u00a0 Some experiences that can’t even be put into words or communicated? Then what?\u00a0 It is these type of experiences that I believe haunt all of us, and that we are attempting to do something with, hide from or avoid.<\/p>\n
When I often think of babies and mothers, I can imagine that a baby might have just these types of experiences. Before words, there probably exists an infinite number of experiences that babies and mothers have.\u00a0 What if some of these are terrifying?\u00a0 And if they are pure terror, how does the mother respond?\u00a0 Will she even notice?\u00a0 How can a baby communicate an experience of terror to mother?\u00a0 And what happens if the baby can’t?<\/p>\n
I do not have any answers to any of these questions, only more questions.<\/p>\n
But I have felt this experience of terror in and out of the consulting room.<\/p>\n
Here are some images from inside the consulting room.<\/p>\n
She is talking about a game she played as a child.\u00a0 A game called catch the head.\u00a0 She would play it with her parents.\u00a0 As she continues to talk about this game, I start to feel a shaking, sickening sensation in my stomach.\u00a0 I can’t shake it or understand it.\u00a0 It’s just a game.\u00a0 It’s just a game.\u00a0 Until I get it.\u00a0 The head was a human head from a man the parents had killed.<\/p>\n
He is an undercover cop.\u00a0 The first day in my consulting room he tells me that I’m a sitting duck for anyone that would want to kill me.\u00a0 He explains that my office is a corner office with the stairs just outside my front door.\u00a0 There is only one way in and out, and I allow the patient to sit between myself and the door.\u00a0 This was a cardinal rule I learned when working in state mental hospitals–always sit between the patient and the door.\u00a0 The cop explains that someone would just come up the stairs, enter my office, kill me and leave.\u00a0 I immediately think of four specific clients I have been involved with relating to child custody matters.\u00a0 All are fathers.\u00a0 All are abusers.\u00a0 All evoke the feeling of terror in me when I have to deal with them.\u00a0 I can sense that terror just by being in their presence.\u00a0 I have joked that anyone of them would kill me if they could.\u00a0 I decide to have an alarm system put in my office.\u00a0 I still sit with the patient between myself and the door, even though I know how many therapists get killed or injured each year by their patients\/clients.\u00a0 It happens either because the therapist underestimates the patient, overestimates their own ability to handle situations in the consulting room, or they have numbed themselves to the feeling of terror.\u00a0 The alarm system is installed, but it does nothing to lessen the feeling of terror I experience.<\/p>\n
Today, I have come to believe that this feeling of terror cannot be destroyed.\u00a0 It can be avoided for a while, but it will persist.\u00a0 I do have faith that we can all develop a greater capacity for tolerating the experience which will lead to either catastrophe or growth.\u00a0 Or perhaps catastrophe is a form of growth.<\/p>\n
I doubt that there will ever be a way to understand and think about this terror.\u00a0 It is just too much.\u00a0 It can only be experienced and perhaps tolerated and sat with for a while.<\/p>\n
I had a supervisor once who told me “Never ask a patient to do something you’re not willing to do”.<\/p>\n
Some days I play in my mind with changing the seating arrangement in my consulting room.\u00a0 You know, have me sit between the patient and the door.\u00a0 I usually consider this after another experience with this thing I have called terror.\u00a0 I always dismiss the idea.\u00a0 I know it wouldn’t take the feeling away, and anyway I still want to experience it.\u00a0 Where will it lead?\u00a0 Catastrophe, growth, some unknown place waiting for me to discover?\u00a0 Besides it would be hypocritical.\u00a0 I hear my supervisor’s words in my head.\u00a0 I cannot\u00a0continue to assist\/ask\u00a0patients to go to a place I am not willing to go.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Brody<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She tells me a story I have heard before.\u00a0 She is in an abusive relationship.\u00a0 She can always sense it\/feel it coming.\u00a0 When she does, she provokes him to explode and get it over with.\u00a0 It is not the attack and beating that she can’t stand, that she wants to get over with.\u00a0 It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drbarrybrody.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}